C.E. Murphy - Truthseeker

Ioan smiled, a rueful expression that made him look much more human than any of the Seelie court. More human, even, than Dafydd, who’d had a century of pretending to be one. “Merely a trick so old that it no longer holds wonders for our kind.”

Lara, still feeling dull-witted, said, “It’s a good trick,” and pulled her helm off. She put it down by the pool, then sat beside it and stared toward the black pearl palace. Shock was good for one thing, at least: she had no fear left at all, only utter bewilderment. “Who was on the battlefield, then?” she asked eventually. “The blond Unseelie, I mean.”

“Another trick. A glamour to dishearten Emyr, or so I hoped. I haven’t looked like that for a long time.” Ioan sat beside her. Peculiar behavior, Lara thought, for a kidnapper and the leader of an enemy people.

“Start there,” she said after a while. Putting words, thoughts, together was taking a long time, but a sense of the absurd rose at the idea. The people of this world lived forever. A mortal taking a few minutes to scrape intelligent conversation together would hardly be noticed. “Start with being dark-haired and dark-eyed and golden-skinned. Nobody in the Seelie citadel is. Nobody at all.”

“Nor was I when I came here. I was as my seeming was, there on the battlefield, pale-skinned, light-eyed. I chose to become what my friends and family here were.” Ioan gestured to the far-distant cavern ceiling and to the myriad dwellings littered along the towering walls. “We lived under the sky, once, and this land was known by another name.”

“You did? It did?” Lara bit her tongue as Ioan chuckled.

“We did, and it did. It was called Annwn, which meant ‘the land beneath,’ and I think once upon a time your people found your way here through fairy mounds and underground paths.”

Uncomfortable truth left Lara’s skin a mess of goose bumps beneath her armor. “I wouldn’t know. I don’t like fairy tales.”

Ioan gave her a strangely sympathetic glance, far gentler than the one Dafydd had given her when she’d said the same thing to him. The unexpected kindness felt like a punch, and she looked away, searching for something else to say. Static was fading, leaving her thoughts clear, though she still felt as though she’d been sent to an advanced class in a subject she hadn’t studied the basics of. “Annwn’s the name you said was yours. Hafgan ap Annwn. Your last name.”

“My father—Hafgan, not Emyr—would say that he had no last name, and that he simply was of Annwn. That word has become less than it was, though, and if it carries any meaning now, it is perhaps only ‘the people of the earth.’ The Unseelie were once as fair as the Seelie. They—we—lived on and worked the lowlands of the sea, and were colored silver and blue and gray and green, all the shades of water. But we have dwelled so long under the earth that it has stained us, and so Emyr named us Unseelie, the dark ones, and we took the name as our own.”

Lara blurted “That’s not possible” over the hum of truth in his words. “I mean, people don’t—That would take generations of evolution. It doesn’t work that way.”

Amusement creased lines around Ioan’s eyes. He scooped up another goblet full of water, offering it to her with a cocked eyebrow. “And in your world, I think it doesn’t work this way, either.”

Lara stared at him, then, realizing she was still thirsty, accepted the cup and drank it into nothingness. “No,” she said when it was only droplets on her gauntlets. “No, it doesn’t. And I’m having a hard time with that.” She’d questioned her talent more in the past twelve hours than she could remember doing in her life, though each time she’d recognized the basic truth of the situation she faced. Dafydd had disappeared in front of her; the Unseelie had undergone physical change in a way that humans simply would not. Ioan himself had, evidently by choice.

For the first time, she felt a twist of compassion for those who didn’t share her gift. I don’t believe it had never been a phrase that made any sense to her, not when someone was confronted with irrefutable truth. She’d always been impatient with it, unable to understand why someone would deny what was real, even when the reality was terrible. If she could hold on to the fumbling sense of disbelief this world had confounded her with more than once, it might make her relationships at home a little easier.

If she ever got home. Lara pressed cold metaled fingers against her mouth, and felt the weight of Ioan’s hand on her armored shoulder.

“This is Annwn, Truthseeker. These are the Barrow-lands. What governs your world does not hold true here. Best keep that in mind, if you can.”

“You’re not what I expected,” Lara said distantly. Aerin had given her a similar warning, though about the people rather than the place itself. Hearing it echoed in the Unseelie king’s advice made her consider more sharply why she’d agreed to come to the Barrow-lands. Kelly’s teasing had been part of it, and Dafydd’s appeal another part. But she’d had no idea at all what she was agreeing to, and now Dafydd was missing and Lara had been taken from the people who ostensibly had a reason to protect her. She wasn’t afraid, but neither did she imagine there was much she could do to help, anymore.

“I am not, or we are not?”

“Either. Both. You’re not much like Emyr.”

“My father would have reminded you more of Emyr. He was of that generation, though life for our people is so long it scarcely seems it should matter.” Ioan studied the pool waters. “My father might have known the answers I now seek, but the pain of lost Annwn drove him back to the sea long ago, and he left no secrets behind. Without him, I need your help, Truthseeker. It’s why I brought you here.”

“Brought me, is that what you call it? Did it occur to you to ask, rather than kidnap me?”

“No,” Ioan said with shocking honesty. “How might I have asked? In the midst of battle, or by hunting down Emyr’s citadel and knocking politely on the door? Emyr barely tolerates his own kind, much less Unseelie.”

“You’re his son!”

Ioan gestured at himself. “If he saw me like this, he would reject me. He would say I’d turned my back on my people.”

“Which is true,” Lara said, startling herself. Extrapolation lay outside of her talents.

Or it had; Ioan gave her a wry look that suggested she was right. “Why should I not? I was a child when I came here, and what I found, as I grew, were a people who had lost their history, lost their sense of selves. Legend that laid blame for that at Seelie feet.”

“The Seelie think all their problems are your fault, too. That you’re overrunning their land.”

“And perhaps somewhere in the middle lies the truth.”

The words were a challenge. Lara’s spine straightened, though her armor didn’t permit much slumping. “If I help you figure it out, are you going to let me go?”

He, after a moment, bowed his head. “Perhaps.”

Lara laughed, surprised at the truth for all that there was no point in him lying to her. “That’s not very convincing.”

“I know.” He glanced up again, dark-eyed and earnest. Kelly, Lara thought, would find him incredibly attractive, although even Kelly’s libido might stop short of falling for a man who’d kidnapped her. Lara felt her expression shadow at the thought, and watched Ioan’s earnestness fade, as though he recognized he was playing his hand too far. “I would like to say I’d release you, but you’d know if I lied. If you can help me find the clear path of our history, the truth is I may need you further.”

“To do what?” Lara lifted a hand. “Wait. First tell me what you think happened in your past, and then tell me why you can’t remember. I thought you were supposed to live forever.”