C. E. Murphy - Wayfinder

Lara gestured toward the pool. “Use it to scry for him. Prove me wrong.”

Pique thinned Emyr’s lips, and Lara fought down a triumphant smile. Ioan, though, took a few quick strides back to the pool’s edge and knelt by it. The unbroken surface shimmered, then deepened, water turning stormy gray. “If I can find him we may have more than one task to complete, Truthseeker. Hafgan and Dafydd’s return, yes, but hunting down our cousin may be more important still.”

Emyr made a sound of angry disbelief. “That spell works in ice alone!”

“What is ice,” Ioan murmured, “but frozen water? The scrying spell has long since been mine to command, Father. You might have considered that, in the years we were apart. We might have been closer, had you ever thought to answer my seekings.” He dismissed the comment with a wave of his fingers, though Emyr went briefly still, staring at the man his son had become. Ioan, as if ignorant of the hard look, brought his full attention back to the pool.

It showed nothing more than relentless gray whirls and white-caps, a chaotic ocean reflected in contained waters. Lara edged forward, trying to find a pattern in the breaking waves. “I thought the scrying spell could find someone anywhere.” Rather like a cell phone, putting people in touch at the farthest points on the globe.

“Almost anywhere. If he’s within Annwn, certainly, but if he’s returned to your world …”

Very much like a cell phone, then, reliant on the coverage available. Lara flashed a smile, somehow reassured that magic and technology had similar limits, though her humor faded as Emyr slid her a triumphant look. “Your protestations of his survival lack teeth, Truthseeker.”

Lara mumbled, “Lara. My name is Lara,” though she doubted Emyr would deign to use it. The title objectified her, and it was always easier to ignore an object than a person. “I’m not going to argue about it, Emyr. Either he’s dead like you’re pretending to believe, or he’s hiding in my world. Either way, he’s a problem we don’t have to deal with right now. Will you call a cease-fire?”

A thrum of determination went through her as she asked. She was almost certain she could enforce a reprieve by using the staff, but it was a solution she shied away from. Like escaping the Unseelie city, the first methods that came to mind were violent: splitting the earth between the two armies, for example, so that few, if any, could cross over and make war on the other. They weren’t options she wanted to explore, regardless of the ease with which she suspected they could be done.

Once again, an image of herself as she’d been only a few weeks ago—quiet, shy, always ready to remain in the background—rose up in contrast to what she’d become. The very idea of wielding significant power, secular or magical, to get her point across would have been inconceivable. Now it was a matter for debate, even if she was determined those debates remain internal.

Caution crept into Emyr’s cool gaze as he studied her, and Lara wondered what subtle change had come over her face to prompt discretion in the Seelie king. “Three days,” he finally said. Beyond him, Aerin’s head came up, surprise clear in the action. “Three days from dawn my army will strike again, and strike hard. If they find themselves battling an enemy whose leader has abandoned them, so much the better for us. If you can affect change, Truthseeker, best do so quickly.” Emyr raised a hand and his horse, still soaked from its prance in the pool, came to him. He swung up onto it with consummate grace and rode for the garden entrance, guards scattering to make way.

He stopped at Aerin’s side, looking down at her. “Join them. I will scry you nightly to learn what comes of this adventure. Should you not return, our vengeance will be in your name.”

Aerin paled but nodded, and whispered something in the elfin high tongue, so quiet that even Lara’s gathering talent couldn’t decipher it. Emyr softened briefly and he put a gauntleted hand on Aerin’s hair, then rode past her, his guards falling into place behind him.

Not until the hoofbeats had faded did anyone speak. Ioan said, “Well,” with pleasure, and Lara, at the same moment, asked, “Why did he do that? He can’t want me to succeed.”

“You could not see your own face, Truthseeker,” Aerin replied. “Emyr remembers when your kind were our justice. I think you may have reminded him of that time, and reminded him of powers even he doesn’t want to cross.”

“What? I thought he was the law. I thought there’d never been more than a few truthseekers anyway. What?” Lara bit down on further repetitions, feeling like an actor dropped into a play she didn’t know the lines to.

“It only took a few,” Aerin said. “And Emyr’s word has been law as long as I can remember. But once upon a time—”

“Oh, no. That’s how fairy tales start.” Lara turned back to her horse, burying her face in the solidity of its shoulder. “I don’t like fairy tales.”

“They seem to have a fondness for you,” Ioan murmured. “Aerin is right, Lara. Yours was not an expression to interfere with. Even I would have shied from it, and you and I aren’t at such cross-purposes as you are with my father.”

Lara gave him a sharp look. “Don’t be sure of that. At least he didn’t kidnap me.”

“Can we not let that be bygones?”

“No, we can’t. I’m not doing any of this for you, Ioan. I’m doing it for Dafydd. If I have to uproot your entire world to get him back, I will. That might end up being to your advantage, but this is not about you.” Lara spoke with ferocity, as if doing so could quell the worry that rose in her every time she thought of Dafydd.

“I envy him,” Ioan said after a moment, “to be capable of inspiring such loyalty on so brief an acquaintance. Be that as it may,” he added, “Aerin is right about another thing. Our ancient histories and legends suggest truthseekers were once the law in these lands, and, not even royal blood was above them.”

“What happened?”

Aerin shrugged. “Rhiannon died.”

“She was one person!”

“She was the queen of Annwn.” Ioan’s simple phrase rang deep bells through Lara, making vibrations that bounced against each other and resonated out again. Lara shuddered, overwhelming emotion rising up to sting at her eyes and send cold bumps scattering across her arms. She cleared her throat, then did so again before gathering enough voice to speak.

“Why is that so important? That was the most … true thing … that I’ve heard here. One of the most true things I’ve ever heard. It felt like—” She broke off, lips pressed together as Ioan and Aerin gave her curious looks. “It felt the same way pure faith does in my world. Like you’d just said ‘God is the king of Heaven.’ It’s so true that saying it is almost silly. Like …” She faltered, but the two elfin folk, fair and dark, were both smiling with wry comprehension.

“Rhiannon was our goddess, Lara. Queen of Annwn, heart of the land. Annwn was born of her, and without her cannot help but be a shadow of what it was. Emyr and Hafgan both loved her, it’s said, and she danced between them as her mood took her. They were jealous of each other, and of her mortal lovers, but when she died they were devastated. That story,” Ioan concluded softly, “is so beloved to our peoples that not even time has worn away its telling.”

“But how can you kill God? Or a goddess, how can you—?”

“Your god, I think, doesn’t walk the earth,” Aerin said, as quietly as Ioan had spoken. “Ours was one of us, the first of us, the womb and magic and vision from which we and this land were born. And for all the endless years of our lives, we can die by accident or violence, and so could she. We’re not like you, Lara.”