C. E. Murphy - Wayfinder

“No wonder Dafydd stayed so long in your world,” Aerin finally said. “It sounds very … interesting.”

“That, and it took a hundred years to find a truthseeker,” Lara muttered. “Ioan, how long are we—Oh! Is that light?”

Ioan, solemnly, said, “It is,” and chuckled when Lara urged her horse forward a little more quickly.

The road bent in front of her, then abruptly opened onto daylight so bright she threw an arm up to protect her eyes. The horse, startled by her boldness, pranced a step or two to the side. Lara yelped, eyes screwed shut as she grabbed for the saddle’s edge. Ioan, still chuckling, caught her horse’s reins and waited for them both to settle before releasing them.

Lara mumbled thanks and patted the horse’s shoulder in apology as her eyes adjusted. Water reflected in the distance, helping to explain the sudden brilliance, but it was the countryside sloping down before her that made her catch her breath.

Jewel green swept away from the mountainside, spreading to lowlands peppered by houses that looked to have grown there. Ancient stone walls sat beneath thatched and slated roofs, and tiny figures were visible through motion as they worked fields stretching nearly to the water’s edge. Mountains curved around the bay protectively, only the beach offering easy access on either side. Even Aerin was speechless as she gazed over the valley, though she turned to Ioan, accusing if still silent.

“We must grow our food somewhere,” he said in response. “Magics have given us many choices within our earthen hall, but we must still fish and grow seed to survive.”

“This land was drowned. ”

“Most of it. The hundreds lie beyond, in the water. See, even yet? There are shadows of the spires that once rose there, shaping the sea. That’s where we go now, not to these few leagues that survived the drowning.”

“You thought everything was underwater?” Cold dismay sluiced through Lara, leaving her rigid on the horse. “Didn’t you wonder how any of them had survived, then?”

“That’s been a question of debate among my people as long as I can remember.” Aerin kicked her horse forward, taking the lead into grounds where Lara thought the inhabitants might well strike first and ask questions later. Ioan, sharing the unspoken thought, cursed softly and urged his horse into a gallop after Aerin, leaving Lara behind on the mountainside.

Pervasive mist softened the valley air, holding its own against the warm afternoon sun. The fields below were wide, bordered by hills and streams and rough stone walls. Different shades of green grew up as the fields came closer to the sea, and finally walls stood between yellowed beaches and the cultivated lands. She could see the slope of the earth all the way from her mountainside vantage to the beaches: it tilted down abruptly with the mountains, then very gently into miles of farmland. At some point in the distant past, the beaches themselves must have been farmland, too, until the sea came up to drown them.

If there were shadows of the towns-that-had-been lying within the water, she didn’t yet have the eyes to see them. The bay was protected, but not idle and calm: sky-colored water rolled in and out again, hiding all the secrets it could.

Secrets that she had agreed to unveil. Lara shook herself, then leaned forward to whisper “Please don’t let me get killed” into the horse’s ear before kicking him into motion after the other two.

The downhill ride wasn’t as bad—quite—as leaping the Unseelie chasm had been. Lara held on, alternately shrieking and laughing, until their chase brought them over a cresting hill and into a scene of chaos.

She reined up, though her horse’s impulse was clearly to join the fray as Aerin, shouting, charged a group of farmers and by proxy, Ioan, who forced himself in front of her, their horses crashing together. One of the farmers, a woman, jumped forward to brandish a scythe at Aerin. Aerin backed away, more because of Ioan’s interference than the armed farmer, though to Lara’s eye the woman had a sure hand with the instrument-turned-weapon.

The noise, for half a dozen people and two horses, was astounding. Lara could pick no words out of the uproar, though Aerin’s soprano was unusually aggrieved. Ioan bellowed over the farmers, whose voices were raised together in war cries as one drew daggers and spun them in his hands. They were more than the peasants the idyllic pastoral setting suggested, Lara realized. They were very likely trained warriors, which, given the history of the land, seemed wise.

Warriors who evidently didn’t recognize their king. A dagger flew, narrowly missing Ioan himself and wedging flawlessly into the armor joint at Aerin’s shoulder. She screamed as much in rage as pain, and transferred her sword to the other hand as she drove her horse forward again. Ioan rushed her a second time, drawing his legs up to launch himself bodily from his horse to tackle Aerin. They crashed to earth in a rattle of armor and supplies, both horses dancing in agitation. One of the Unseelie ran forward, carrying a spade he lifted like a piston, ready to drive it down even as Ioan balled a fist and cracked it across Aerin’s jaw.

She hit back and scrabbled for the blade she’d lost when he tackled her. He dropped a knee onto her forearm, shouting incomprehensibly over her yell. A flash of resolve rushed over the spade-bearing Unseelie’s face, and he changed his grip to swing it like a baseball bat at the back of Ioan’s head.

Lara stood in her stirrups and roared, “That is your king !”

Later, although her shout had been infused with truth, she thought it wasn’t her power that had stopped the brawl. The Unseelie farmers simply hadn’t been aware of her presence until she yelled, and then there was no chance of mistaking her as one of them. Her humanity, not her power, ended the fight.

But not soon enough. The spade, already in motion, slammed into Ioan’s head. He fell forward, arms flung out, and dropped across Aerin, whose shouts were muffled beneath his weight.

Too late, the farmers lowered their weapons to preparatory stages, horror spreading across the spade-bearing man’s face. Lara, swearing vehemently, rode forward and slid from her horse’s back with none of the care she had taken earlier; Aerin’s spell was indeed weaker than it had been.

What little medical knowledge Lara had said the bludgeoned king shouldn’t be moved. Aerin had no such knowledge or compunction, and shoved Ioan away. He flopped to the side, head lolling and blood beginning to pour from the back of his skull. Lara cried out with dismay and knelt, trying to cradle his head so the wound wouldn’t sustain further damage. “Get a healer.”

“Who— what —are you?” The woman with the scythe looked torn between obedience and curiosity. Lara curled a lip and the man with the spade dropped it and ran for the distance.

“My name is Lara Jansen. I’m a truthseeker, and this is your king you just brained. He’s still breathing.” She bent close, making certain that was true. Willing it to be true, though she didn’t think a truthseeker’s power stretched that far. “What the hell were you thinking?”

“We saw—” The woman faltered, eyebrows drawn down. “We saw the Seelie woman, saw the man come after her—”

“And decided to hit the one tackling her, too?” Blood filled the lines of Lara’s palms and dripped from the sides of her hands to stain her borrowed leggings. Someone would never want them back, after this.

“The light,” the woman said uncertainly. “I thought he was fair as well. Now I see more clearly, and see our king.”

Lara cursed again, this time barely more than a gurgle of frustration. She wasn’t in the habit of swearing, and under pressure, felt her vocabulary lacking. “At least the shovel wasn’t edge on. He’d have taken the top of his head off entirely. Do you have any talent at all for healing others?”