C. E. Murphy - Wayfinder

He was also, according to the scant handful of sentences she was able to comprehend, suffering from a profound head wound. Students had found him on the Common two days earlier, and had rushed him to the hospital. Doctors were still uncertain whether he would survive.

“Lady, are you all right?” The news vendor lost his hostility, edging past a stack of papers to come into Lara’s line of sight, face now crinkled with concern.

“No.” Her abrupt response alarmed the vendor, who went so far as to put a hand on her arm in cautious support. Lara lifted the paper, shaking it slightly to emphasize the story. “I know him.”

“Jesus, they’ve been looking for somebody who does for days. Where’ve you been, with your head in the sand? Who did all that surgery on him?”

“He did it himself.” It was technically true, if physiologically impossible in human terms. Lara wet her lips, trying to pull her thoughts together enough to hold some sort of normal conversation. “I’m sorry. I just got back into town and I literally have no cash on me, no bank card, nothing. May I have this paper? I’ll come back and repay you, I promise, but I have friends I need to show this to, and …” Her voice was shaking by the time she finished. Ioan couldn’t, by any comprehensible measure, be in Boston, much less in a hospital. She’d seen him only minutes ago, whole and well.

Outrageous dissension rang through the thought. They couldn’t both be true: either he was here and hadn’t been in the Barrow-lands, or the photo was some kind of glamour. Lara crumpled the paper, eyes crushed shut against the sour musics vying for dominance.

Worry crept into the vendor’s voice. “I guess I lose enough off stolen papers that letting one go on purpose this once won’t hurt. Go ahead and take it, lady. I hope your friend will be okay.”

“Thank you.” Lara managed a weak smile for the man as she backed away. “I promise, I really will pay you. I just can’t right now. I’m really sorry.” Then she turned and fled, meeting Dafydd and Aerin where she’d abandoned them on the street. The prospect of explaining what she couldn’t understand overwhelmed her and she simply thrust the paper into Dafydd’s hands with a feeble attempt to smooth the wrinkles she’d put in its surface.

Even Aerin, unable to read the words, understood in seconds. “This is a ‘photo,’ ” she half-asked, and then with more certainty if no more comprehension, “A photo of Ioan. The likeness is very good.”

“That’s what photographs do,” Lara whispered. “A nearly perfect replica. But it doesn’t make any sense.” Her head throbbed, Dafydd and Aerin’s glamours playing havoc with her vision and only made worse by the incomprehensibility of Ioan’s presence in her world. Her head had hurt for days , it seemed like: almost since they’d left the Drowned Lands themselves. A lack of sleep no doubt exacerbated the pain, and certainly clouded her thoughts against any real hope of figuring out what had happened. “He can’t be in two places at once.”

“Then either this is not Ioan,” Dafydd said slowly, “or the man we journeyed with in the Barrow-lands was not.”

A pure clear chime rang through Lara’s migraine, sweet vibrations breaking it away at Dafydd’s last words, and the impossible fell into place: “Merrick.”

The willpower necessary to cast an illusion of the depth Merrick had commanded staggered Lara. Almost literally: she had a hard time putting one foot in front of the other as Dafydd guided her through the streets toward Kelly’s apartment. It had begun— had to have begun—with Braith’s village in the valley. It hadn’t just been A glamour hiding the town that had triggered her headache. The town itself had been an illusion, and her truthseeking sense had tried desperately to correct what it knew to be wrong. But it was more than that: in the Catskill mountains Merrick had only built an illusion to fool Lara. Kelly had seen through it, rescuing Lara from her own folly. This one, like the spell Merrick had created to mastermind his own apparent murder, had fooled more than one person into believing the same story.

“The magic would be easier to control and maintain in the Barrow-lands,” Dafydd explained. “In your world, tricking a single person with an in-depth illusion might take all of Merrick’s talent. I fooled everyone with my glamour, but it’s so very minor that the effort necessary to maintain it is almost negligible. Making you, a truthseeker, believe I had rejoined you in your world … that requires—”

“It requires my willing acceptance and belief in the scenario. And I think it required the same thing in Annwn. Maybe the real village was a little farther down the same road, and he created the illusion on the path I saw in order to waylay us. And we just delivered him into the heart of the Seelie army, Dafydd. Your father could be dead because of us.”

“As you said, riding into their midst could well be his undoing. I wouldn’t think, though, that it’s Merrick or even Ioan they’ll be seeing. I’d think it would be—”

“You,” Aerin finished grimly. “The son and heir returned, perhaps with a tale of vanquished enemies. There is no one left in the Barrow-lands to protect the Unseelie city now, Dafydd.”

“I’m surprised you care,” Lara said with more honesty than wisdom.

Aerin’s human countenance did nothing to spoil the cool arrogance in her gaze. “I dislike being made a fool of, Truthseeker.”

“Hafgan remains,” Dafydd said with the air of a man trying hard to defuse a fight. “He might yet be the Unseelie peoples’ savior. What I want to know is how he worked the scrying spell.”

“He didn’t.” They stopped at a crosswalk, Lara so grateful to stop moving that she didn’t look to see if they could jaywalk the section. It was a Bostonian pastime, striking out into traffic with the air of one indestructible. The trick was never making eye contact with the enemy: it lent jaywalkers the moral right of way, obliging drivers to hit the brakes. It was infuriating, but everyone participated while on foot, even if they’d only minutes earlier been in a car, swearing violently at jaywalkers themselves.

Dafydd, obviously as familiar with the game as she was, did walk out into traffic, eliciting a gasp of horror from Aerin. As if reminded of the danger, he skipped back—scoring one for the vehicles, Lara supposed—and settled in place to hear Lara’s explanation while they waited for the light.

“The scrying spell is one of ice and water. Merrick doesn’t command those elements. He just created an illusion, and we probably made it easier by giving him that tiny jug of water instead of a pool or a basin like Ioan and Emyr use. He must have been being so careful.” Lara closed her eyes, trying to recall exactly the words and phrases “Ioan” had used. “A direct lie would have triggered my truth-sensing no matter how good his illusion was. He never said he was Ioan. He didn’t even say he’d use the scrying power. He said he had duties to attend to, and was thirsty. It was all true . It just wasn’t—”

“Connected,” Dafydd said. “In the same way you intimated we were from Pennsic. My adopted brother is canny,” he added in a mutter. “I always thought him more honest than that.”

“You were always more willing to forgive him his birth than the rest of us,” Aerin said. The light changed and she strode into the street, boldness an illusion Lara could see through.

Dafydd’s jaw tightened and he moved swiftly to keep up, leaving Lara a few steps behind. “Had the rest of you been more forgiving, perhaps we wouldn’t have come to this.”

“Would we not have? Would you have always been content to be the prince, Dafydd, and never the king?”