C.E. Murphy - Truthseeker

“Good,” Kelly whispered. “In that case, can you please tell me that I’m not seeing the Headless Horseman riding down on me?”

Lara twisted around in time to watch blood splatter from Kelly’s face.

She saw nothing: no horse, no cloaked figure, no sword; nothing but Kelly spinning with the hit she’d taken. There was no sound, not even of Kelly hitting the earth, much less hoofbeats against the stone. Two, she thought clearly: two upstate New York legends so far, and though she didn’t like fairy tales, Lara knew these things usually happened in threes. She said “Two is enough” under her breath, and slipped down yards of grass-riddled rock to Kelly’s side.

Her friend’s eyes were wide but glazed, and the cut along her cheek scored hideously deep. It had caught the bone, narrowly missing her eye; narrowly missing the fleshy cheek, where it might well have severed her face. The strength Lara had wished for earlier roared through her and she savaged the skirt of her dress, tearing off a strip to ball it against Kelly’s face.

Kelly gave a thin gaspy shriek that turned to a real scream as she saw something over Lara’s shoulder. Lara risked a glance as she folded herself over Kelly. There was nothing there, a promise she shouted into Kelly’s screams. The truth was a shield and Lara its manifestation; no new scores opened in Kelly’s flesh, though she whimpered again with fear.

“It isn’t there, Kel. It isn’t there.” Truth pounded through the words, but not enough: even if Kelly wanted to believe her, the monsters were too real. Lara, shaking with determination, bent her head over Kelly’s until their foreheads touched. “I’m going to show you. I have to show you, so you’re not afraid. So it won’t be able to hurt you. This will work,” she promised. “It has to work.”

The music had always been internal, even when it had opened a path from one place to another. Even when she’d sung aloud to focus it, the power had come from within, bound by her flesh.

It wasn’t enough. Not this time, not now. She reached for the staff where it lay to the side, abandoned when she’d collapsed at Kelly’s side, but it remained sullenly quiet, unwilling to offer her any of the strength it had shown when she’d struck it against the earth and broken open a path to another world. Frustrated, she wished for an instrument, for some talent to share music directly with others through something other than her voice. A lifetime of hearing truth’s song, and she’d never thought to learn to play anything. She would, she promised herself. She would do that, when she was free of the complicated world Dafydd had introduced her to.

The words woke a snatch of music in her mind, a phrase of gospel song. Eyes closed, she whispered the lyrics, then struggled to strengthen her voice. “Great God Almighty, I am free, I am free at last.”

She whispered the will to be free toward Kelly; freedom from the illusions of the world, from the comforting lies, from the terrible things hidden by falsehood. Freedom, most especially, from the magic that convinced her of the Horseman’s presence. Such a conviction could hurt her, even kill her, if she believed hard enough.

Song and strength poured out of her in a rush, leaving her temporarily bereft and in sudden silence. Kelly, though, screamed again and surged upright, fingers clawing at something Lara couldn’t see. “Oh my God, oh my God, no, make it stop!”

“Kelly! Kel, it’s me! You’re okay, I’ve got you!” Lara caught her, holding on hard, and for long seconds Kelly struggled, her gaze still panicked and distant. Then she collapsed, hands over her ears as she twisted away from Lara.

A mad orchestra, every instrument playing its own tune, crashed back over Lara as Kelly broke away. She put her own hands to her head, agog at the noise. It drowned out the sound of her heartbeat, of her breathing; of every normal thing that told her she was alive. The world was abruptly too much to take in, filled with cluttered, unorganized truth that no one person could possibly bear.

But she’d borne it all her life. Lara shook her head hard, trying to sort out the cacophony, and pieces of it fell away so quickly she had the impression the very world was abashed at its behavior. Notes came clearer, different instruments coming in to tune with one another, so that when a sour flute sounded she sensed it as wrong, and tried to tug it into alignment. It resisted and she pulled harder, then let herself forget it as Kelly half sat up, staring at her in horror.

“Is that what it’s always like? So loud, all that music everywhere, all that pain, all that awful truth?” She crumpled and Lara pulled her close again, breath coming hard and short.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know what else to do.”

“I don’t ever, ever want to see things the way you do again.”

“I promise,” Lara whispered. “I promise, Kel. I’m sorry. I know you weren’t meant to see things like that. Only I am.” The world was calmer now, cymbals of discontent settling into more regular chimes. Distortions still rippled through it, tunelessness striking again, and this time she recognized it as the same dissonant warning the nightwings carried with them. It was closer, reluctantly closer, and she remembered how she’d pulled at that off-tone, trying to make it match the rest.

“Well done,” said a bitter male voice. “Well done indeed, Truthseeker. I had never meant to come this far.”

Bewildered, bloody, angry, Lara lifted her gaze to see a young man—as all the people of the Barrow-lands were—standing before her, his dark hair shadowing equally dark eyes. He had his people’s beauty, but it was marred with a glimmer of madness. “Ah,” he said, mocking. “But you don’t know who I am, do you.”

“You’re wrong. I do.” Lara, full of calm certainty, got to her feet. “You’re Merrick ap Annwn, and this is all your doing.”

“When did you know?” Strained curiosity filled the Unseelie prince’s voice, as though he strove to make light of being discovered, and fell just short.

Lara gave a deprecating laugh. “Not until just now. Not until I started thinking what could be done with illusion. I just don’t understand why. What do you get out of starting a war between the courts?”

“Power.” Merrick shrugged. “You should have seen that much, Truthseeker. What else does any ill-favored son covet?”

Kelly, unexpectedly, muttered, “A father’s love, usually. It’s all very Oedipal, or something. Lara—”

Lara hissed a warning, trying to silence her friend. Merrick’s gaze flickered to her, then back to Lara, a dismissal that caused Kelly to draw offended breath. “Tscht! ” Lara said, and splayed her fingers backward, trying again to cut Kelly off without ever taking her own eyes from Merrick.

His attention, though, was drawn to Kelly a second time. “You mortals have a saying, I think. One that suits my situation. ‘Better to reign in Hell,’ is that not what you say?”

“Not most of us.” Kelly subsided as Lara shot a despairing glance over her shoulder. The wadded-up skirt Kelly held against her face was black and wet with blood, and something in the way her mouth pinched told Lara that sharp commentary was meant to distract Kelly from her injury. But the truth wasn’t a shield that could protect her, and so Lara was desperate for her silence, not wanting Merrick’s regard to linger on her.

“For most of you,” Merrick said softly, “there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of others between yourselves and absolute sovereignty. For me there are four. It’s a surmountable number, and most easily achieved through war.” His voice sharpened. “A war that should have been met within hours of my ‘death,’ were it not for mortal interference.”