C. E. Murphy - Wayfinder

The thought was a true one, filled with deep bassoon notes, as if the sound of tearing stone had been transmuted into music. That would have been enough, but the staff, which lay strapped across her back now, sang an answer as much as her truthseeking sense did. If one part of the Barrow-lands had drowned, another area had risen. The bleak gray wall ahead of them was part and parcel of that, and the staff exuded smugness over the fact. Lara bent her head over the horse’s mane, discomfort crawling along her spine. Ioan hadn’t intimated that the staff had personality, but she had no other word for the barrage of feelings.

The thought twinged discordance and she amended it. She had another word: sentience . But that was too alien to be fully considered. Oisín, who had carried it for years, might be able to explain the weapon’s evident character, but the poet wasn’t among the riders approaching the Unseelie court.

Emyr’s curse barked across her thoughts, and her horse obeyed the command that the other riders gave their animals: it slowed, prancing to the edge of a plummeting canyon. The soaring escarpment lay on the canyon’s far side, emphasizing again the impression that granite had simply been torn asunder, a ravine ripped open so the rock face could be permitted to shoot skyward. On the far wall a narrow, plunging ledge jutted down sheer rock face, its foot lost in darkness. Sparks of pain flew through Lara’s skull as she stared at it.

“The crevasse looks as though it narrows to the right,” Aerin called. “Perhaps there’s a crossing point. Shall I ride to see?”

Below Emyr’s grudging agreement, Lara asked, “Haven’t you ever been to the Unseelie palace?” Her vision pounded, bolts of searing light breaking through the image of what she saw and what she knew was there. She had always had a susceptibility to migraines, but only in the past few weeks had their auras been triggered by deceiving magic.

Emyr growled. “What reason would I have to visit my enemy’s stronghold?”

“To see your son?” Lara suggested, and only too late wished the words away. Emyr’s lip curled, but she raised a hand, barely aware she was silencing a king. “The forest path to the Seelie citadel is glamoured. It can’t be seen until you’re on it, so the horses have to know the way.”

“What of it?”

Lara caught her horse’s reins up. It whickered in surprise, as she’d done nothing to suggest guiding it before, but it went willingly enough when she turned it away from the precipice and rode back through the gathered guards.

“Clear a path.” She would never have imagined herself giving calm commands, nor for a dozen riders to make way as if she had every right to give orders. Only Emyr hesitated, and then, irritated, he, too, pulled back from the cliff’s edge.

It was easier to see from a distance. The air didn’t twist as badly. Lara’s headache faded, allowing her to look through the disguise that had been laid upon the entrance to Unseelie territory.

The rift in the earth was unquestionably still there. But across from them was not flat rock face, but rather a black maw gouged into the cliff. She had ridden it before: she knew , despite what her eyes wanted to see, that the cavern hid a tongue of stone broad and solid enough for a horse to leap to, and that the plummeting pathway visible along the flat wall in truth led straight down into the canyon’s depths. It was a far more difficult illusion than the one laid to hide the Seelie citadel. That one had merely surprised her, while this wrenched at her vision and had nearly cost her the contents of her stomach when she’d first ridden it. Even now, knowing its truth, it was nearly impossible to see through, though the longer she frowned at it, the clearer it became.

Its trick was in flattening the real landscape, so that the eye saw a nearly endless edifice rising behind an equally lengthy ravine. In fact, the stone rising up before them was cut into a nearly perfect squared corner, with great lengths of granite running at close to ninety degrees. One shot off to Lara’s right, where Aerin rode to explore the slight narrowing of the crevasse. The other was almost straight ahead. It was down that angle that the pathway ran, still plunging as deep into the chasm as it did in the illusion. Lara blinked once and the entire glamour smoothed back into a single plane, still fighting the truth she believed in. Dafydd’s glamour hadn’t been so persistent. Once she’d seen through it to recognize his elfin features, it hadn’t worked on her again. Whomever had cast the spell into these great stone walls had poured tremendous magic into the job. Lara wondered suddenly if the maker had survived his efforts.

And now, very likely against wit and wisdom, she was going to lead the single man whom they had probably most wanted to keep out of the hidden city into it. Lara patted her horse’s shoulder and tried not to feel foolish at murmuring “Trust me” to the beast.

It snorted agreeably, and in the instant she drove her heels into its flanks, Lara wondered if it was trust, or if the magic-riddled horses could see through the glamour. It hardly mattered: it sprang forward in a run and leapt fearlessly into the chasm. Lara’s stomach dropped and she had an instant to be grateful for the spell that kept her stuck to the saddle.

A heartbeat later they landed in a clatter of hooves against the broad cave tongue, glamour giving up and no longer trying to fool Lara’s eye. The horse pitched down the incline leading to the Unseelie city. Behind her, Lara heard Emyr’s shout of astonishment and preparations for his host to follow. Only a few seconds passed before the first of his guards hurtled across the void and gave chase.

Gave chase , as though there might be hope of escape. At best Lara’s precipitous arrival would offer the Unseelie a momentary warning before Emyr burst in on them. Not that there would be many people left in the city, not if things were as they’d been the first time she had visited. It had seemed then that everyone able-bodied was already at war, and after months of battles, she didn’t imagine that would have changed.

Still, Ioan was there, or Emyr’s scrying spell would have called up a location other than the palace garden. He could be warned, and perhaps could tell her of Dafydd’s fate before Emyr arrived. That knowledge might be enough to stop the Seelie king.

Sour notes lingered with the thought, suggesting it would take more than just news of his younger son to placate Emyr. A struggle between gratitude at her power’s continuing development, and resentment that she could no longer abide in false hope for even a moment, rose up. Someday she might be able to turn her truthseeking sense off , a thought worth pursuing.

The plunging path before her ended, her horse’s hooves slipping against stone as they reached flat ground. The roadway took a sharp curve into a carved gateway in the rock wall’s face. The horse gathered itself again and they burst through the unguarded passage into a cavern so vast it defied the eye. Even on a second viewing, Lara found it all but incomprehensible.

The enormous block of granite was little more than a shell, its interior hollowed out, probably by magic. Erosion wasn’t impossible: even at a full gallop Lara could hear the incessant thunder of a distant waterfall that fed the small river wending through the cavern. Not impossible, but unlikely: there were cordoned walkways along the high walls, and the town itself sheltered in the cave’s dark reaches looked to her like a thing grown up from magic, not made by builders’ hands.

It was in every way the opposite of the shining Seelie citadel. Where that was soaring opalescence, the Unseelie city was low rambling black mother-of-pearl. Lara tore through its streets, half fearing her horse’s hooves would damage the delicate-looking stone, but no chips flew. A few astonished children, wearing brightly colored and warmly woven clothes, scattered away, and sent alarmed cries to their caretakers as the rest of Emyr’s guard rushed in seconds behind her. Lara crashed through the open courtyard that joined palace to town, guiding her horse over silver-pebbled pathways and down half-remembered halls in search of the pool Ioan had met her at, and which Emyr had called up with his scrying spell.