C. E. Murphy - Wayfinder

There was far more, certainly, that she didn’t know, but that was enough. Each element she remembered added a piece to the symphony: the warrior, drums; the protective nature, a lonely note from a trumpet. They came together, weaving a ball of music and light that hung in Lara’s mind as it gathered strength, then ricocheted across the countryside in a blaze. “Roadways,” she said aloud. “Please follow the roadways.”

Song gurgled as it twisted around, returning to Lara and seeking another path. She said, “Back down the beach, back to where we left the horses,” into Dafydd’s shoulder, and heard a trill of impatience enter the symphony as the riders wheeled and drove their animals back the way they’d come. “Does your lightning have a personality?”

“Short-tempered but easily assuaged,” Dafydd replied without a hint of seeming to think the question strange. “Impatient, impulsive, callous. There’s no softness in it. Why do you ask?”

“Because the truthseeking music is starting to make commentary. And the staff has all along,” Lara added more softly. “It wants to be used. It wants to destroy.”

“Your will is stronger than its.” Determination, if not strict accuracy, filled Dafydd’s voice. “Lara …”

She pushed her nose against his shoulder and said, ruefully, “This still isn’t the time.”

“Perhaps not, but I’ve greeted Aerin more enthusiastically than you, and that was hardly my intention. I feel … rushed. As though I daren’t stop moving, for fear events will overwhelm us. And I barely know what’s happened this past season or more!”

Something popped in Lara’s chest, making breathing easier. “I feel the same way. And you’re forgiven. I got a kiss, and she didn’t.” It was petty, but his acknowledgment in how he’d received Aerin made all the difference.

“You kissed me,” Dafydd said firmly. “A favor I intend to make up for later. Now, Lara … can you tell me what I’ve missed?”

She said, “Turn left where the road forks,” instead, as the pathway behind her eyelids veered that way. For a moment she dared open her eyes, glimpsing the roadway. Texture and color set it apart from the fields alongside it, even in the moon’s scant light. A thrust of bright music lay over the road itself, not illuminating it in any real-world way. The combination made her dizzy. She closed her eyes again, grateful that she rode with Dafydd and had no need to guide the horse herself.

“I don’t know most of what’s happened here,” she said then. She sketched out the details of Dafydd’s rescue by Ioan and Merrick’s reappearance, the latter of which made the Seelie prince’s posture tense so much their horse whickered in agitation. “I followed him back to the Barrow-lands, through his worldwalking spell, but I got thrown out of time again. He’s here somewhere, Dafydd, I’m sure of it. Hiding in the waters, maybe, although I thought he might come after us while we were in the city and he didn’t. Thank God,” she added with feeling, then exhaled and brought her attention back to the matter at hand. “The farmers who attacked us saw two Seelie warriors, and Ioan’s no longer fair.”

“Can you seek him the way we seek Ioan now?” Dafydd relaxed a little, though there was still strain in his body.

Lara shook her head. “Maybe once we stop moving. I’d need to concentrate more than I can when we’re jolting.”

“Jolting?” Dafydd sounded offended and Lara laughed.

“I’m not used to horses, Dafydd. Right, turn right up ahead. We’re almost there.” The streaking light in her mind was resolving, becoming a steady bright point. “Can you see a town?”

“Village lights. There’ve been one or two others along the way. You’re certain this is the right one?” The question was more impressed than suspicious; Dafydd had never doubted her, not since he’d recognized her gift.

Lara pressed a smile into his shoulder, then peeked over it to catch a glimpse of torches glowing in the near distance. “If it’s not, my power has gone horribly awry. That looks like real fire.”

“It is,” Aerin called. Lara startled, having not realized the Seelie woman could hear them over the horses’ hooves. Aerin dropped her horse into a walk to make conversation easier as she nodded toward the village. “Our light spheres are easy to maintain, but they’re a constant slow draw on magics. They must use fire for most light in this valley, or one of us would have discovered them long since.”

“You hunt down magic use? You can do that?” Whether they should was another topic entirely, one Lara wasn’t prepared to broach.

Aerin shrugged. “Not as a matter of course, but it can be done. It’s why we hide our citadels behind glamours, to make them less vulnerable. So if there had been a long constant draw of power here, in a valley near the Drowned Hundred … yes. Someone would have investigated, and Emyr would have—”

“Taken action,” Lara volunteered as a shiver spread over her skin. Emyr was not a nice man. Neither had Hafgan been nice, and it was easy enough to see how two leaders of such arrogance could drag their people down paths of unthinking cruelty. Ioan at least seemed less dedicated to the concept of his own superiority, and Dafydd was entirely diffident by comparison to his father. Maybe it was their relative youth, but it seemed to Lara the Barrow-lands would be better governed by the sons than the fathers.

“Yes.” Aerin sounded pleased by the phrase taken action , and Lara cast a helpless glance toward the heavens before leaning around Dafydd to better see the nearing village.

Not only the torches danced in her vision. Even with the truthseeker’s path guiding her, the whole of the little town flickered in and out of her sight like Brigadoon. Heat banded her skull, warning of an oncoming headache. “I hate glamours.”

Dafydd blinked over his shoulder at her and Lara made a face. “They give me migraines. I think the town is glamoured. Probably makes it harder for murderous Seelie to stumble across it.”

Injury entered Dafydd’s eyes and Lara pulled another face. “Sorry. That wasn’t fair.”

“I should think it was.” A woman’s voice came out of the darkness ahead of them and both Seelie reined up as the voice was followed by shadows releasing a familiar face: Braith, still bearing the scythe she’d threatened Ioan with earlier. Her red hair was almost black in the scant moonlight, and she looked older, grimmer, than she had by day. “That’s exactly why the town is glamoured. It’s one of our few means of defense, Truthseeker. We will not change that for your comfort.”

“No.” Lara pinched the bridge of her nose, ineffectively willing her headache to retreat. “I wouldn’t expect you to. But may we enter the village? It might be less distressing from the inside.”

“Who is your companion?” Braith obviously meant Dafydd; Aerin, she recognized and disdained with a single glance.

“Dafydd ap Caerwyn,” he said, unwisely in Lara’s opinion. In Aerin’s, too: she stiffened and moved her horse a step closer, for all that she no longer had either armor or weapon.

Braith’s grip on the scythe became more aggressive. “Emyr’s second-born.”

“The same. I bear you no ill will, and put myself in your power for the duration of our visit.”

A hostage to good behavior, in other words, though doubt spiked through Lara. The Unseelie in this valley had no reason at all to keep their enemy’s son alive, not when a degree of vengeance could be enacted with no one the wiser. She and Aerin stood as the only two witnesses, and aside from the staff, were unarmed. It would be the work of moments to rid the world of all three of them.

The staff rumbled anticipation through her. Whether it was for her potential demise or the possibility of battle, Lara neither knew nor cared. She slipped down from the horse to face Braith. “He means it. The truth is, he’d probably stay here forever just to keep things more settled between your two people, but that won’t accomplish any of the things you and I both want. Emyr would never accept Dafydd being left here, and I can’t learn what happened to Annwn without Emyr’s help.” Or without finding Hafgan again, but that was more than Braith needed to know, even if the lie of omission rang warning bells in Lara’s mind. “We’re running out of time, Braith. I need you to decide now if you’ll help us or not.”