C.E. Murphy - Truthseeker

Fascination and uncertainty, but no fear, and its absence seemed peculiar. A man—not a man; whatever he was—should have raised alarm inside her, not a slow release of tension, as if the changes that had been wrought explained a wrongness she hadn’t been able to define.

His form, through the shoulder, the waist, the hip, was subtly different, ever so slightly more slender. His height seemed more dramatic for the narrowness of him, though he was no taller than he’d been a moment earlier. The clothes he wore, which had looked good on him moments earlier, now hung poorly on his frame, as if they had been made for a bulkier brother. Glamour stripped away, Lara could barely believe she’d been unable to see it before. He would never again be able to hide beneath his glamour, not with her.

She coughed on a question, unable to put the right words together. David smiled, and when he spoke his voice was lighter, filled with the music of tenor bells.

“My name is Dafydd ap Caerwyn. I am a prince of the Seelie court in the Barrow-lands, and I know you for a truthseeker because my people have legends of them. My brother has been murdered, Lara, and I need your help to find his killer.”

Blood rushed through her ears, the sound of surf crashing in time to her pulse. “Seelie, what does Seelie mean? Elf? Are you an elf? You look like an elf, you’re …” Nearly human. Nearly, yet he could never be mistaken for human, not like this, not with the indescribably ethereal aspect she now saw.

“Elf would do, though it has connotations in American culture that would make my people cringe. We aren’t small woodland sprites, though we are a people of the forests.” He spoke as he might to a wary animal: soft, calm, reassuring, as if the steady song of his voice was more important than the words.

Lara clung to them regardless, like they might be a lifeline back to a reality she hadn’t intended to leave. She said, “No,” hoarsely, and meant it as an agreement. “You’re like the elves in the Tolkien books.”

Astonishment turned his eyes to pure gold. “I thought you didn’t like fairy tales. You’ve read those?”

“Of course not.” Lara backed away until she reached a wall to lean against for support. To put her back against, like she could keep surprises from creeping up on her that way. “But I saw the film trailers.”

“Ah.” A smile flashed across his face, and Lara thought the images from the films were entirely wrong: those elves had seemed so solemn, where Dafydd’s rapid-changing expressions held the capacity for undiluted joy. “More like them,” he agreed. “More than the big-eyed, big-haired creatures with oversized swords that litter video games and cartoons, at least.”

“And you’re …” Words failed her again and she stood speechless against the wall before seizing deliberation in order to stave off panic: “I don’t understand.”

Dafydd took a step forward, then unexpectedly knelt, as if doing so was all that stopped him from chasing her across the room. His voice became something like a song, accent coloring it and turning the words liquid. “Truth will seek the hardest path, measures that must mend the past, spoken in a child’s word, changes that will break the world.” Wry apology colored the third line, and the song, if not the accent, left his voice as he added, “Only my people would consider a woman in her twenties to be a child. Forgive us that. Our life spans are measured in centuries and millennia, not days and years.”

“Dafydd.” Lara had used the variant before, but David was easier to remember, easier to say, than the slight softening that Dafydd required. But the man, the creature, kneeling before her was by no means a mere David . Nor would he ever be again, she thought: like the glamour, once undone, she would always think of him as Dafydd .

Only after she spoke did she realize she said his name as if it offered answers. Her heart spasmed again, making an ache of tightness in her chest, but loosening her throat. “The beginning. You need to start at the beginning.”

“There was a murder,” Dafydd said without hesitation. “And that, among my people, is not done. A poet and prophet charged me with finding a truthseeker to hunt the killer with. I have been half-exiled ever since, unable to return home without the truth at my side.”

Lara’s laugh cramped in her throat. “With the truth at your side? I can tell if people are lying to me. That doesn’t make me a-an archetype.”

“No.” The negative was an agreement, but Dafydd’s eyes were intense on hers. “But only because you’re not at the height of your skills. Legend claims that a truthseeker in the grasp of her full power strips away all falsehood around her and lays bare the hearts and souls of everything that surrounds her.”

Horror washed over her. “I don’t want that. People are uncomfortable with me already. They’d hate me. Find someone else.”

“There is no one else.” Dafydd got to his feet again, slowly this time, as if she might startle and run. “There hasn’t been a truthseeker among my people in aeons. I came to your world hoping I might find a half-blood child who bore the gift.”

Lara pressed against the wall, cowardice far greater than curiosity. “I’m not—”

“You aren’t,” Dafydd agreed quickly, before she had time to struggle through the rest of the words. “Your gift is purely human. Almost,” he said with a brief smile. “You could almost be part Seelie, from your figure and form. But there’s a touch of something to the courts that—” He hesitated over the word, then made a pattern of rain with his fingers, indicating himself. “Glows.”

Lara nodded jaggedly. With his glamour stripped away, an alien warmth cast gold through his presence. In another man she would call it charisma, but in Dafydd ap Caerwyn it was somehow more: as if his very breath could draw her in. She lacked that, and knew it as clearly as she knew her own name. “Then how can I …?”

“Be a truthseeker? Your people have magic, Lara.” David’s smile went sad. “Not much, and not often, but it’s always been there. You know the stories of your great wizards. Merlin,” he offered, and Lara nodded again. “Or those with the second sight.”

“Psychic hotlines,” Lara said, and he shook his head.

“What would it feel like to you, if you took phone calls and money to tell people if something was true?” A shudder coursed over Lara’s skin and David nodded. “Most psychics, real ones of any power, feel similarly. One of the prices of the magic. Come with me, Lara.” He offered his hand, a smooth movement full of grace. “Help me find the man who killed my brother.”

“You’re cra—” Lara looked away, jaw clenched. You’re crazy . A very normal response, perhaps even a true one, but not something she was often inclined to say. “You are crazy,” she whispered after a moment. “You might be an elf, but you’d have to be a deluded elf to think a woman who’s known you for a few days would …”

“Would cast all to the wind to help a stranger? Would you not, Lara? Do you not?”

“No! Not … not like this. I don’t solve murders. I don’t hunt down criminals. I just help a little where I can, Dafydd. And how do you even know that?” Anger burned away discomfort, Lara’s cheeks heating. “I just go to open addiction meetings, to try to help people face their problems a little more truthfully, that’s all. How do you know that?”

“I’m a snoop.” Dafydd got to his feet, but stepped back to the counter, putting greater distance between them. “Kelly’s comment about you knowing the truth intrigued me, Lara. I’ve been looking for you for so long. So I—”