C. E. Murphy - Wayfinder

She grated, “No,” in a voice so low she didn’t recognize it as her own. The pain lessened not at all, but some of her light-headedness faded, and her next heartbeat didn’t seem to blur the air with more blood. She put more force behind the next “No,” willing a difficult thing to be true: that was a truthseeker’s gift, to make something that was not, be.

Staunching the blood flow did nothing to stop Aerin, though. Lara flung her left hand up, wishing against reason she held the staff in it so she might at least parry, and put all the strength she had into her voice: “Stop!”

Aerin’s sword trembled to a halt an inch above Lara’s heart. Distortion wracked the Seelie warrior’s features as she fought the coercion, trying equally to drive the sword down and drag it up again. Lara clenched her teeth and dug her heels into the ground, shoving herself along the city street. That was her stomach Aerin would skewer if she broke the compulsion; now her pelvis; now her thigh, each push bringing a different body part into danger. But bad as gut wounds were supposed to be, dangerous as severed thigh muscles might be, she had a chance of surviving them. Her truthseeker’s power would be of no use at all if her heart were pierced.

Aerin roared as Lara inched to a less deadly position, and the compulsion failed: she slammed the sword down again. Lara jerked her legs apart, the blade scraping her inner thigh with another bright flare of pain. She had cut herself with a knife a time or two. Those accidental slices had nothing on the white-hot anguish of a sword blade parting skin and muscle. The pain was so great there was a purity to it: nothing else could possibly exist within its realm.

Except, perhaps, a thready, panicked desire to survive. The only thing greater than pain was wanting to outlive it. And possibly a growing ambition to visit the same anguish on the one who’d hurt her.

That was how wars were fought, Lara thought in a burst of clarity. It had to be, and that was a revelation she’d never wanted. She laughed, knowing the sound to be almost a sob, and inched back a little farther, taking herself out of the blade’s way. Aerin had driven it down too hard: it was mired in the stone beneath drifting sand.

Sitting up was difficult. Not impossible, though even the discolored blood floating around her went gray as her vision dimmed with the effort. But being able to sit, like turning her head, was probably good: it probably meant the muscle wasn’t as badly damaged as she’d initially imagined. And there wasn’t nearly as much blood as she was sure there should be. Aerin had broken one compulsion, perhaps, but the one Lara had laid on herself still held true.

Aerin gave up on the blade and whirled around with a kick aimed at Lara’s jaw. Dizziness, not reflexes, saved her; she was already sagging when the warrior woman threw the kick, and Aerin misjudged the distance. Lara kicked her in the other knee with just enough strength in it to knock Aerin’s footing askew. Aerin fell and Lara surged forward, drawing on reserves she hadn’t known existed in order to pounce on Aerin’s torso.

She landed with her knees on Aerin’s upper arms, knowing the pin would only hold her for a few seconds. Knowing, too, that she couldn’t keep Aerin down any other way, not with her arm only half responding. Not with Aerin’s fighting skills and Lara’s utter lack of them.

Something malfeasant crawled under Aerin’s skin, as though her blood itself had been corrupted and fought to be free. Scales rippled on her skin and faded again, replaced by sharp rows of teeth bursting from her gums. Her eyes were losing their color, sickly yellow replaced by a dead black that reflected the city’s dark light. Like a shark’s, Lara thought, and pieces fell into place.

Aerin had lost a fight on her way to the memorial gardens. Maybe against an unaltered animal, but more likely against some creature whose largest part had been a shark. And given this new predator, this Seelie warrior woman, to meld with, it was taking the city’s bleak magic and re-forming her into a deadly, undead monster.

Llyr had pulled chimeras apart, returned them to their native state. He’d paid the price for it in seeing new, more dreadful monsters born of his efforts, but it didn’t matter. If the magic Lara released backfired, made monsters of greater horror and scope than before, at least she had tried , and there might still be a chance for redemption ahead.

“I don’t even like you very much, and I don’t think I know you well enough to be sure of making this work. But I can’t just leave you like this. I won’t leave you like this.” Not for the first time, Lara wished she had an instrument, something to guide music with. She promised herself once more that she would learn one, when the fight for Annwn was over.

But for the moment she reached for the only weapon she had, and began to sing.

“Eternal Father, strong to save.” It had been years since Lara had sung the Navy Hymn, but its lyrics and her location fit together. She wished the tune were more sprightly than stately, but that might be for the best: easier to pull back her God’s power if it came in slower waves than if it rolled over Aerin inexorably.

It was condemning enough as it was. Aerin screamed, raw sound that tore through Lara’s memory, shattering half-forgotten words into fragments. The tune, though, remained. Breathless with fear Lara hummed a snatch or two of the music, falling back as it ripped into Aerin and changed what she had become. Heat poured off the Seelie woman, distorting the air as it distorted her skin. She collapsed, silence worse than her screams as ripples rolled over her skin, Unseelie magic at war with the hymn’s power. Lara scrabbled for words, certain only of the verse’s beseeching final lines, though she dared a tiny change to them: “Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee, for those in peril in the sea!”

For an instant, Aerin was illuminated, her form a shadow within a greater writhing mass that struggled for survival and domination. Her intellect was desirable, Lara thought, but her too-human shape was impractical for a sea-based predator. At least the thing struggling to envelope Aerin hadn’t thought that it could evolve beyond the sea: a twisted magic from a dead land could spell ruin for all the Barrow-lands, should it reach shore. The next lyric was strengthened by Lara’s horror, voice more confident as she used music as a weapon: “Oh Christ! Whose voice the waters heard, and hushed their raging at Thy word.”

Aerin’s shape became the predominant one again, but her skin was reddening like she’d stood in the sun too long. There was hope, Lara thought. The only question was whether the hymnal would burn Aerin away before the deviltry was purged from her body. So easy to think in those terms, though the “devil” was no more than another creature fighting to survive in waters tainted by magic gone wrong. Witchcraft: that was probably how her church would see everything in and about the Barrow-lands. Lara had never thought of witches or their magics as beautiful, though, and even under the strain of Lara’s own power, Aerin was beautiful.

Selfish, shallow, childish thought; it was good to save something beautiful. It was good to save any life; that was the idea she should hold on to. Her voice strengthened again, though the contortions beneath Aerin’s skin, the heat of her body, said there was almost no time left. Dafydd had flinched at the name of the Holy Trinity, and Aerin was being exposed to so much more.

A clawed hand suddenly came up and caught Lara’s throat. Song squeaked into nothing, but for an instant all the black, all the discolored yellow, fled from Aerin’s eyes. She rasped “Keep. Singing !” before collapsing again, and clarity rang in Lara’s mind.