C. E. Murphy - Wayfinder

Hafgan stood encircled by flame, power and heat blazing off him. Nothing Lara could think of stood against water, not in the long term. Even fire so hot it boiled the bottom of the ocean ultimately conceded its battle, stone cooling and rising under water’s implacable pressure. But that was at home, where magic didn’t hold sway. In the Barrow-lands, it was possible a king’s will and power might defeat even the most relentless element that Lara’s world knew.

Even as she thought it, the strength in Ioan’s calling changed. Its music softened, drawing back, and the heat beneath Aerin’s stone shield intensified again. Dafydd let go a curse, fingers curled uselessly: he might survive throwing lightning into the raging fight between fire and water, but Lara would be electrocuted, and even Aerin, literally grounded, was unlikely to live through the attempt. The fight was Ioan’s alone.

Ioan’s draw of power faded, sending a spasm of despair through Lara. A true path still refused to respond, and with Ioan’s magic faltering they had no more than minutes, perhaps seconds, to live.

Falsehood sang through the thought, and Lara, abruptly, thought of tsunamis.

An instant later a wall of water crashed into the city’s heart.

Fire guttered inside a breath, drowned by the mass of water rolling over it. Shocked relief ricocheted through Lara as the tidal wave rolled harmlessly around them, guided in its entirety by Ioan’s will. Hafgan’s howl crashed through the water. There was no sense, though, of his life being quenched, only the inferno that had eaten at the garden. Within seconds, even that was struggling to rebirth itself, though the stunning amount of water pouring through the city gave fire little purchase. But it only needed a little, when powered by magic instead of conventional fuels.

Lara drew in a breath of wonderfully cool air and knotted her hands around the worldbreaking staff. “Your power, bent to my will,” she whispered to it. “I can open the path out of here, and you can make it solid so we can run on it, or we can burn and drown at the bottom of this cavern. Those are the choices. Take your pick.”

Anticipation stretched from the staff, its semi-sentience searching for the flaws in Lara’s offer. There were none: she’d spoken with a truthseeker’s conviction, certain that they—and the staff; most importantly, in its view, the staff—would lie cracked and lost beneath the boiling inferno if it didn’t choose to bend to her will. It pushed at her resolve, which, a little to her own surprise, held firm: she would rather die there than release the staff’s power into the world un-mentored.

Pure petty resentment flared from the staff, but it acquiesced, and the silly, catchy song sprang into Lara’s mind again: Follow the yellow brick road!

White light, not yellow brick, exploded over the city, pathways parting water as they plunged low, and making brilliant streaks as they shot across the granite sky. Even guided by her desire, the staff had a mind of its own, but it wasn’t reaching for destruction. After an eternity of seconds, one of the pathways crashed into being around them, turning the gloom inside of Aerin’s stone shell to a spotlight-brilliant glare.

All four of them grabbed each other’s arms and scrambled up the escape route they were offered, leaving the conflicted city behind.

Only the fear of falling back into the city took Lara to the path’s end. It angled too steeply upward, and at any other time the incline would have defeated her. Her legs alternated between stabbing pain and rubberiness as they reached the far side of the chasm that protected the Unseelie city, where she and the others simply dropped to the ground, gasping sickly for air. A new sense of determination rolled from the staff and Lara let go a frustrated yell, casting it away so it couldn’t take advantage of her weakness. Contact with the land wasn’t enough: it needed a cognizant wielder in order to parlay its power, and she was determined not to become that conduit when physically and mentally exhausted.

She became aware, slowly, that there were others around them. The city, quiet as it had been, had not been abandoned: dozens of Unseelie lay scattered around them, men and women who had taken the paths that appeared through the dying city and who had run to safety along a road of magic. Like her little group, they were too sickened by the escape to react for a long while, but an explosion within the city jolted everyone out of their collapse to stare slack-jawed as the granite shell began to fall.

Voices slowly lifted in bewilderment, fear, and growing despair as flame engulfed their home. Their gratitude for surviving was so far beyond them that it was as yet unimaginable. It would come in time, along with guilt if anyone had been left behind, and with anger for what had been visited upon them. Lara, numb beyond comprehension, spared a prayer of thanks that they had survived, but like them, she had nothing in her but blank shock at what was unfolding.

Dafydd, dully, said, “Worldbreaker,” to Lara. The word held no accusation; it was just an exhausted and apt descriptor.

Aerin, beneath that, said, “Lara’s home, now Ioan’s. All that is left, Dafydd, is our own. ‘Worlds come changed at end of day.’ What will you leave us with, Truthseeker?”

“I don’t know.” Lara stared bleakly at the fire. She had in her life never visited destruction on anything more than a pillow, and now she had overseen the ruin of two cities in barely as many hours.

No wonder Hafgan had hunted down and eradicated the truthseekers.

“The city’s fall was my decision, not your failure. I could have drowned him, and chose not to. The survivors will know who destroyed their home. Perhaps it’s a way to mend the schism between Seelie and Unseelie. Especially, perhaps, if Emyr is indeed dead, and the crowns must fall to a different generation.” Ioan put a hand on Lara’s shoulder, then let it fall, as if afraid physical contact would make the uncertainty in his voice easier for her to read.

“What about Hafgan? Is he dead?” Looking at the blaze, it seemed impossible the Unseelie king could live, but Ioan shook his head.

“He’ll be in a fit of ecstasy, bathed in his element that way. It will fade, and he’ll come to the Seelie citadel in search of either Merrick’s capitulation or his own retaliation, but we have a little time. Time enough, perhaps, to learn if Emyr of the Seelie lives.”

“Time enough to depose a pretender and make a united stand against the Unseelie,” Dafydd growled.

Lara put her hand on his thigh, the gesture weary. “Don’t. Don’t you start hating the Unseelie as a whole, Dafydd. You defended Merrick when the rest of your people dismissed him because of his heritage. Don’t follow them down that path. I couldn’t bear it.”

“I defended an unworthy man.”

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean the rest of them deserve to be painted with that brush.” Lara’s shoulders dropped, weariness rolling over her again as she thought of how much Kelly would like hearing her use the vernacular phrase.

Dafydd crouched to put his arms around her shoulders and pull her close, murmuring a promise into her hair. “You’re right. I shouldn’t. I’m just tired of this game, Lara. I’ve never particularly liked politics, and now it seems they’re costing me the lives and love of people around me.”

“At least you were born to it. A month ago I was just a tailor.”

“Tailors,” Dafydd said solemnly, “are meant for great things. Someday I’ll have to tell you all the fairy tales that say so.”

Lara groaned, glad for a jolt of humor even as she said, sincerely, “Don’t. If I’d known that I might never have become a tailor.” The blatant untruth made her laugh, and she rocked in Dafydd’s arms, face buried against his chest. He smelled of fire and water, though none of them were as wet as she thought they should be after the deluge. Ioan’s doing, probably; there was no reason for anyone to stand around dripping when a master of the element was on hand. She finally exhaled heavily and sat back, though remaining coiled in Dafydd’s arms for hours was by far the most pleasant prospect she could think of. “Okay. Whether we’re finding Emyr or deposing Merrick, that means we have to get to the Seelie citadel. We don’t have any horses. How far is it to walk?”