C.E. Murphy - Truthseeker

Lara, grateful that she didn’t have to watch in order to stay safely on her horse, closed her eyes hard, and considered the possibility that the Seelie might be unable to find the Unseelie court if they were unwilling to be found.

She remembered, too, how the avenue leading to the Seelie citadel had also appeared only when they were already on it, apparently at will. They both seemed to be hidden people, Seelie and Unseelie alike, both inclined toward isolationism and the black and white boundaries it drew. She wondered how the two courts had even managed to communicate enough to make a bargain over their firstborn sons. She would have to ask Dafydd.

If she ever got the chance.

A new wave of nausea clenched her belly, fear rather than the twist of magic. Lara swallowed against it and raised her eyes to the path in front of them, shocked to see they’d nearly reached the bottom. Within seconds the leader disappeared, though not through magic this time: the road simply curved sharply at its base, delving deep into the rock.

They burst out its other side into a cavern so immense that Lara reined up her horse in awe, too goggle-eyed to care whether her escort disapproved.

The rock face they’d just ridden down had to be little more than a shell, so vast was its open interior. Walkways, most of them cordoned, ran up and down the walls, interrupted every few yards by balconies carved out of living stone. At the far end, distant enough to seem small, a waterfall crashed through the rock, its thunder a low comforting echo throughout the enormous chamber. Mist cooled the air, and the smaller sound of a river was nearer to where she sat astride, but the floor of the unending cavern was what held Lara’s eyes.

A town of black mother-of-pearl spread out before her, oily rainbows scattered in its curves. At its heart was a palace, the Seelie citadel’s antithesis, low and rambling, where the bone china city ran high and pale. They were both alien, both beautiful, both unwelcoming, both compelling. The leader of her escort barked an order for her to continue, and she edged her mount forward into the gleaming walkways with an eagerness that belied good sense.

Almost no one stood watching as they paced through the streets. A handful of children in bright colors; a handful of adults whose presence bespoke great age, though their faces were as youthful as any others. The rest had gone to war. Lara wondered if any of the children would lose a parent on the green battlefields. There was an emptiness to the city that reminded her of Emyr’s citadel, although she hadn’t seen that stripped of its people. It seemed possible that both courts simply lacked some spark of life that gave their homes heart.

At the palace door—there were no gates, simply a shining courtyard that joined the town to its castle—her escort dismounted. Lara stared at the ground, uncertain. Aerin hadn’t mentioned whether she’d be able to dismount if she wanted to, only that she couldn’t fall off.

Maybe if she was certain not to fall . She grabbed the saddle’s front with both hands, not caring how awkward she looked, and concentrated on swinging a leg over her horse’s broad back, all her weight on one stirrup. The feeling of being pinned in place vanished, and she reached for the ground, dismayed at how far away it was before her toes finally made contact. Pleased with herself, she disentangled from the stirrup and stepped back to discover her eight guards all looking somewhere else, as if they were trying not to laugh.

A thought flew through her mind: this would be her best opportunity to attempt an escape. If, at least, she had a weapon, an idea how to use one, or a plan. She had none of those, and shrugged with resignation as the Unseelie mastered their expressions and fell in around her again, guiding her into, and through, the palace.

Gardens sprang up with the same regularity as they did in the Seelie citadel. These, though, were of metal and stone: trees had marble trunks and golden leaves, and vines of emerald wended their way around them. Sea-clear pebbles littered the garden floors, and when a nightingale sang, Lara was certain it was a mechanical wonder, and not a real bird. Her guard followed the path of a silver-bedded stream, its color that of a northerly ocean, as it fed into a pool set with the same silver shimmer.

A man stood before the pool. He was broader than Seelie men, partly in fact and partly thanks to the doublet he wore: heavier material than any of their costumes, with rounded stuffed seams at the shoulders. Practical, Lara thought; the cavernous city was chilly, cooled by the waterfall and perhaps by being too close to the surface to retain a steady temperature. The handsful of people who’d watched them come through the city had been similarly dressed.

But this man wore black, and it suited him. His hair was inky beneath an ebony and ruby circlet, and his skin golden in comparison to the pale Seelie. He held up a hand, and Lara instinctively obeyed the command, freezing in place.

Irritation swept her before he gave her permission to move. She made fists, surprised at how stiff her fingers were inside their metal casings, and walked forward. “What do you want with me?”

The Unseelie king turned to face her, eyebrows elevated in surprise. He was handsome, Lara realized with her own small shock of surprise. More handsome by far than Emyr, whose coldness left its mark, and better-looking than Dafydd in a classical sense, though she preferred Dafydd’s angular lines. He studied her a moment, then bent to make a cup of his hands and scoop water into them. When he straightened, it was with a worked silver goblet in his hand, which he offer to her. “I am Hafgan ap Annwn—”

Wind instruments shrieked objection, turning Lara’s skin to ice beneath her armor. “You are not.”

The Unseelie king stopped midword, staring at her. Lara thrust out her jaw and glared back, anger flaring high enough that she hardly knew herself as she snapped, “I don’t know who you are, but you’re sure as hell not Hafgan. I’m a truthseeker. There’s really no point in lying to me.”

A long silence met her accusation, ending, finally, in a twitch of the crowned man’s eyebrows. “I had not meant to test you, but it seems I have done so regardless. I have been Hafgan for many centuries, Truthseeker. Long enough that even the oldest among us have forgotten that someone else once bore the name, and that he now lies above the salted earth and below the bitter sea. Drink,” he added more prosaically, “and I will do my best to explain. Drink,” he said again, when she hesitated. “You must be thirsty.”

As he said it, Lara became aware of how dry her throat was, how sticky her tongue was in her mouth. She scowled at the cup, determination very slightly greater than thirst. “Who are you?”

The man sighed. “I am, and have been, for a very long time, the king of the Unseelie people. But once upon a time, and this is the name I think you seek, I was called Ioan ap Caerwyn, and I was the son of Emyr on the Seelie throne.”

Lara’s heartbeat thudded in her ears, drowning out all other sound. Thumped at her skin, for that matter, washing away cold and replacing it with heat, but also bringing a static numbness to every inch of her body, as though she’d received one shock too many and could no longer feel anything at all.

Truth, though, wouldn’t let her go. Its power pecked at the numbness, soundless chimes cracking armor her mind needed, until it shattered and left her able to move, if not to think clearly. She shuffled forward and took the silver cup from the king’s hands, then drained it. The water was cold and bright-tasting, and the cup disappeared as she drank, until the last sip swallowed the last curve of silver and she was left staring at a trace of water on her gauntleted fingers. An insipid comment welled up, the only thing she could find to say: “That was really cool.”