C.E. Murphy - Truthseeker

“Or kill me.” Lara tugged the blindfold carefully, then tightened it again. “I don’t think I can take it off without going crazy. I’m still seeing white and hearing whole orchestras. I feel like an overstuffed sausage.”

Worry came into Kelly’s voice, distorting its usual music. “Maybe you should let go of the power.”

Lara shook her head. “I’ll lose him if I do.”

“Blind, high-heel mountain climbing it is, then. When this is over we’ll start a school for athletic businesswomen. At least you can use the staff as a, er. Well. Staff. You know what I mean. A walking stick.” Kelly helped Lara out of the car and got her the staff before adding, “This is a terrible idea, you know?”

“I know.” The ivory staff was cool in Lara’s hands, like it had been after she shut off its power from shaking the earth. That was good: she was certain its power was part of what had stripped the world down to its barest essentials, and she still had the headache from that.

“Okay. I just wanted to make sure it was clear. The first bit’s not so bad. We’ll go slow.”

“We’re going to have to!” Even using the staff as a walking stick, the earth under Lara’s feet seemed eager to reach up and grab her. She set a reluctant pace made somewhat smoother by Kelly’s quick warnings of “Root, hole, branch!”—though the last proved to mean “duck” rather than “step up,” and Lara clobbered her forehead against sturdy lengths of wood twice before Kelly started saying “Duck!” instead.

“Log,” though, meant something to climb over. Kelly went first, grunting. “There’s a kind of pit on this side, so you’ll have to slide farther down than you think you will. Give me your hands.” She guided them down to its softening surface, and Lara leaned there for a moment, testing it with her weight and trying to listen beyond the music in her mind. The discordant tones veered to their left, pulling the threads she’d envisioned that way as well.

“I can’t see and it makes me feel like I shouldn’t talk,” she said after a moment. “Or maybe I’m just paying too much attention to my feet to try. We’re going to have to stop more often so I can see which way to go. We have to go left a little.”

Kelly drew in an unhappy breath. “Are you sure?”

Lara lifted her blind gaze, an eyebrow arched under the weight of Dafydd’s coat. Kelly muttered, “Yeah, yeah, okay, of course you’re sure. It’s just that it gets rougher pretty fast over there, Lar. The angle goes up and it gets rockier instead of woodsy. Maybe we should look for a way around. Go up a ways from where we are and see if it smoothes out.”

“You go.” Lara climbed over the log and sat on it. “It’ll take three times as long if I go up, and if it turns out there’s no way around we’ll have to come back down. At least if you go up we’ll know, and if it’s clear you can come get me.”

“You want me to leave you sitting blindfolded in the middle of a mountain forest?”

Lara managed a wan smile. “We’re probably far enough off the beaten path that the only person who’s likely to find me is the guy we’re after. That’s sort of a good thing.” Rueful truth ran through everything she said, thinning out some of the weighty song still dominating her thoughts. “We’re closer than we were. Maybe we’re close enough that I can let some of this power go and still track him. I’ll try while you’re looking for a path through, okay? It gives us both something to do.”

“All right,” Kelly said unhappily. “But yell if you need anything at all, will you? Even if you just don’t like being alone down here.”

“I will,” Lara promised. “Go on. I’ll be fine.” She forced her shoulders to relax as she listened to Kelly scramble up the hill, then turned her attention to the raw music pounding through her mind.

She had barely loosened her hold on it when Kelly’s scream ripped the air.

Magic ripped loose of Lara’s grasp, music drowned beneath the sound of Kelly’s terror. She yanked her blindfold off, tears flooding her eyes at the day’s sudden brilliance, but her feet were already carrying her forward with no care for safety or sight. The ground seemed even more treacherous as her vision returned; Kelly had made light of its difficulty without quite lying about it. Lara scrambled upward, putting weight on the staff despite its look of fragility. She stepped on her dress skirt repeatedly, its fullness proving more impediment than her heeled sandals. In frustration, she seized the fabric and pulled it up gracelessly. No one was there to see, and all that mattered was she reach Kelly.

A vast boulder, deposited on the mountainside by glaciers many millennia past, blocked the way. Lara shot a glance off to the left, wondering how difficult that path had been, if conquering a fifteen-foot rock was the preferable choice. Packed earth made a ridge along it, leading slowly upward and reminding Lara of the pitched stone road that stretched down to the Unseelie city. That was good, she thought: any parallels to the Barrow-lands meant they were closing in on their quarry.

Dissonance thundered through the thought. Lara shouted, a raw sound of frustration as she tried to push the music away. Lies had never been comforting to her, but for once she craved their solace. Parallels with the Barrow-lands were coincidence, nothing more, but she wanted them to have meaning. She drove herself up the ridge, stepping on her skirt again as it escaped her grip. Stitches tore at the waist, making it sag further, and she wished she had the strength to simply rip the whole thing free. Deliberately destroying clothing—that was a thought she’d never imagined having.

The narrow ridge switched back as it reached the boulder’s edge. Softer ground had been cut away, making a skinny V between the mountain and the half-unearthed stone. Kelly couldn’t be too much farther ahead. It had been mere moments between her departure and her screams. Lara ran, staff in one hand and her damnable skirt hitched up in the other, and burst through the end of the switchback.

It opened onto a raw expanse of earth that had once been the site of a river or a landslide, with rocks strewn about it in awkward chunks. Dozens of tall thin stones stood at skewed attention, like bowling pins knocked partially aside, and innumerable round stones the size of beach balls lay among them. Kelly hid behind one of the taller rocks, arms curled over her head. Relief soured the panic in Lara’s stomach and she ran forward, waving. “Kelly! Come on!”

Kelly dropped her hands, face stricken with dismay. “Lara, no! Watch out!”

A round rock as large as those settled among the tall ones came flying down the riverbed. It bounced, shattering smaller stones into shrapnel, and spun on its axis to veer toward Lara. She shrieked and ducked, the rock flying overhead. It bounced once more, then crashed into a ravine a little farther down the mountain. Heart hammering, Lara straightened to gape after it, and Kelly’s warning shout came a second time. “Get down!”

Another rock came smashing down toward her. Lara shrieked again and ran for one of the standing stones. A third rock bashed its top off, sending dust and shards over her, and she stuffed her hand in her mouth to keep from crying out again.

“It’s—” The thunder of another stone rushing toward them drowned Kelly’s words and ended in a shuddering crash that shook the earth. “Fuck,” Kelly bellowed, “that one hit my pin. It’s ninepins, Lara. We’re the pins.”

Bewildering truth shot drumbeat rhythms up Lara’s spine. She stuck her head out from behind her rock regardless, trying to meet Kelly’s eyes. “Who the hell’s throwing the balls?”