C. E. Murphy - Wayfinder

An awkward sting of empathy pricked at Lara. She wanted to be proven wrong no more than Aerin did, but if she was, it was only weeks, not aeons, lost to her. It seemed a fair trade, somehow, for the chance of embarrassment. Graceless, she lurched forward to press her lips against Dafydd’s before her own ego reasserted itself.

After a lifetime of immersion in it, she more than half expected truth’s song to rise up in a crescendo: a dramatic, moving sound track to accompany the scene. Instead its silence coiled around her, carrying darkness instead of the light she had recently become accustomed to. There was nothing, nothing , on the far side of sleep’s deadly veil. Not for him, at least. There were no dreams, no hopes of new life or old friends revisited, only an emptiness that went on forever. And for all its stillness, for all that the music had died, it was true . Annihilation lay beyond death for the elfin peoples, an utter ceasement of being.

Lara flinched back, breaking the kiss to gaze at Dafydd with bewildered regret. Regret for herself: neither Aerin nor Ioan had shown concern over the potential ends of their immortal lives, nor did she think Dafydd would. They had forever, or near enough to it, in the days they walked the earth. It was only Lara and her kind who left mortal bodies behind after a few short decades, and she had always found reassurance in the thought of seeing missing friends again. But her brief span of years—even if they could be elongated by staying in the Barrow-lands, as Oisín had done—would be all she ever had with Dafydd. There would be no eternal reunion in a spiritual homeland.

“So you better wake up,” she heard herself whispering. “Because if this is a limited-time offer, I don’t want to lose out on it. Live,” she added, now smiling. “Live, damn you. Live. ”

Dafydd ap Caerwyn drew breath, and with that first breath, laughed.

Aerin gasped, a short sharp sound mixed with relief and sorrow, but only Lara heard it. Dafydd was still chortling, gaze coming into focus as he smiled at Lara. “You’ve been watching too many movies. ‘Live, damn you, live’? Was I—” His attention went beyond Lara, not so far as to Aerin, but simply up to the phosphorescent glow of the curved ceiling. “Lara, there are things I would like to say to you, but I suddenly think now is not the time. Sunrise,” he added in a measured voice, “seems to have taken on an unlikely tint.”

Lara lowered her head over his chest, biting back a tiny sob. “There are things I might like to hear. This has been …” She inhaled deeply and shook herself. There would be opportunities for talking later, when Aerin wasn’t in such close earshot, and until then there were innumerable things Dafydd needed to hear. She told herself that fiercely, then steadied her voice.

“You’re back in the Barrow-lands. In the Drowned Lands. You nearly died fighting the nightwings, Dafydd. Ioan opened the worldwalking spell and brought you back here to heal. That was …” Time’s broken passage left her at a loss for words, but she tried again after a few seconds: “Two mornings or six months ago, depending. Two mornings, for me.”

Dafydd went motionless, eyes still fixed on the ceiling. When he spoke, it was with careful neutrality. “And six months for the Barrow-lands? Does my home still exist in any meaningful manner, then, or have Emyr and Hafgan— Ioan —destroyed it in battle?”

“We have about a day to get back to Emyr before he obliterates the Unseelie.” Lara reconsidered her phrasing too late: Dafydd lurched to sitting, and finally saw Aerin standing in the chamber’s entrance. Delight swept his features and he surged off the bier to pull her into a hug. The words he spoke into her armored shoulder were unclear, but their sentiment was not: his gratitude for her presence knew no bounds.

Lara, lips pursed, glanced away, and was overly pleased when Aerin, wryly, said, “Not that I’ve lost faith, Dafydd, but I’m here at Emyr’s behest. And were it not for your truthseeker, he would ride on the Unseelie city tonight; my life is in her hands.”

“And your hair?” Dafydd touched Aerin’s burned locks. “What happened?”

“We fought a chimera,” Lara said into Aerin’s uncomfortable silence. “The only way I could think to defeat it was with a hymnal. It was hard on Aerin.”

Astonished gratitude lit the Seelie woman’s eyes as Dafydd spun to face Lara again. “A chimera? Lara, you must tell me everything. The nightwing battle, what happened? I remember—” Chagrin slipped into his words, slowing him, and he stood arms akimbo. “I seem to remember you throwing a crowbar at me.”

“A bar of crows?” Aerin’s eyebrows shot up, garnering a laugh from the two familiar with the mortal realm.

“A length of iron with one clawed end.” Dafydd made claws with two fingers. “Hence its name, I presume. You might have killed me, Lara,” he said with a bit more seriousness.

“You were already killing yourself. I was just trying to stop you from working any more magic. And it worked. Ioan came through a world-door and killed the nightwing. One two, one two, and through and through,” Lara said more softly, recalling the ease and speed Ioan had moved with. “He brought you back to Annwn, then to the Drowned Lands and their healing waters, because you weren’t recovering on your own.”

“You said that. And you came here how? Not through Ioan’s spell, if time is yesterday and half a year since.” Dafydd strode the chamber as he spoke, leaving Lara and Aerin to watch in bemusement. He paused at each tomb, examining the sleeper atop it, then moved on until Lara’s answer brought him to a full stop:

“I followed Merrick, Dafydd. He’s alive.”

“That is not possible.” Dafydd lifted a hand even as he spoke, barring any protest of truthfulness Lara might have made. She hadn’t planned to; Dafydd’s confidence in her power was sufficient that she recognized his denial as both necessary and perfunctory. People often disbelieved reality, even when the so-called impossible had taken place before their eyes. To be told the man he’d murdered was alive, without seeing it himself … it took Dafydd less time to recover than Lara thought it might. He gave a minute nod, freeing Lara to speak.

“He was your brother in all ways that mattered. You know what element he commanded?”

“Air.”

“And with the right glamours, air becomes illusion.” Lara counted loud heartbeats, waiting for Dafydd’s second nod. Waiting for him to work through what he’d been told, and waiting for the argument she knew he’d make:

“The compulsion that drove me more than once was no illusion.”

“Dafydd, I can lay compulsions.” Lara made her hands into fists, hating the confession. “It’s what I’m doing when I make people believe me, or when I stop them from acting as they might want to. And I’m only human. A truthseeker, maybe, but still only human. If I can do it, I’d think anyone with enough will and power could do it.”

“Someone of royal blood,” Aerin said. “Someone of Rhiannon’s line.”

Lara, taken aback, blinked at Aerin. “I thought Rhiannon was Emyr’s wife. And I thought you were all of her line. I thought that was the point.”

“We are, but some are closer to her than others. Your faith is full of contradictions itself, Lara,” Dafydd murmured. “Do you believe all mankind to be descended from Adam and Eve? Or from Noah, after the Flood?”

High chimes of discomfort sent cold crawling up Lara’s nape. It was a question she’d struggled with as a child, until religion and science had come to a truce: she had no concept of how long God might think a day was, nor any reason to be utterly convinced that making Man in His image had not taken generations of evolution. There had been Adams, of that she was certain; there had been Eves. Men and women who were the first of their kind whose children, through the ages, bred true. “Point taken. But does that mean Rhiannon was both your mother and grandmother?”