Truthseeker

Eighteen

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.”

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.”

“Living forever doesn’t mean remembering forever. The past fades as it does for mortal memory as well, but for us, it stretches so far back that our own lives become legend. Only a truthseeker can strip away the fog and tell us what truly happened.”

“Which you think is …?”

“I believe—my people believe—that we were once, if not masters of this land, at least equals in its governing.” Ioan fell silent, leaving an air of expectation that Lara sighed into.

“And? Do you know what that answer sounds like, to me? It sounds like a half-tuned orchestra. The strings are groaning against each other and the wind instruments are creaking like they’re falling trees. Whatever it is you’re not saying makes what you have said sound like a lie. Half-truths aren’t enough.”

Ioan pulled his face long, another expression that seemed more human than the Seelie usually indulged in. “Very well. We also believe it was Emyr, or his court, who called worldbreaking magic and drowned our lands and drove us underground.”

Lara interrupted, “Worldbreaking magic.” Oisín’s prophecy danced through her mind and sent hairs rising over her skin. If the power was something that lay outside her, it suggested there was some hope of returning home, rather than her very travel between worlds presenting a threat. “What kind of magic was that? How do you break a world?”

“With a weapon long since lost to us.” Ioan shrugged, hands spread in loss. “If such a thing existed outside of legend, I think it can no longer be in Annwn. I’ve searched,” he said more softly. “What can break a world can perhaps heal it as well. But without it, all we have are stories that say we’ve been persecuted by the Seelie for longer than memory allows us to recall. Without it, only a truthseeker’s help may permit us to regain our rightful place in this world.”

“Only a truthseeker’s help.” Something in the words stood out, making their obvious content so shallow as to be meaningless. Lara got to her feet, suddenly uncomfortable. “Tell me what you mean by that.”

“If our legends are revealed as history, then I’ll need a truthseeker’s vision to turn the tide of war in my favor.”

“Emyr mentioned that,” Lara said thinly. “That truthseekers could say something and through force of will make it true.”

“The most powerful, yes. If your skill isn’t that great, then I would give you maps of our lands so you might show me ahead of time where our enemy will strike, and give us the advantage.”

Lara lifted her gaze to the far side of the pool. She heard music, not in Ioan’s words, though his conviction rang there, too. No, it was a chime, a warning that seemed to start behind her heart and fill her chest. “And if your legends are just that? Legends? If there’s no lost worldbreaking magic, if the Unseelie are trespassers on Seelie land?”

Ioan’s silence drew out long enough to answer her without words. Lara’s heartbeat fluttered, a butterfly sensation that clawed her breath away. Her ears pounded with the relentless thin tone of bells, almost drowning out Ioan’s eventual response. The words came slowly, as if he was only just coming to realize the truth: “I’m sorry, Truthseeker, but I can’t let you go.”

A breath hissed through her teeth. “So you’re not such a good guy after all. You’re very reasonable, but not a good guy. I can’t let you keep me.” She recognized the music now, recognized the feeling it built in her, though it had been far less intense in the forest outside the Seelie citadel. It rang so loudly a path appeared, striking its way through her heart and leading into the pool, where it reflected hard against silver stones.

“I think you cannot stop me.”

Lara whispered, “But I can,” and stretched out a hand toward the water. “There’s a true way through these woods. A true way home again.” Laughter akin to panic knotted itself in her throat, and she reached for the only phrase she could think of that would unlock a magical door: “Open, Sesame!”

A silver-shot door tore apart the bottom of the pool, water draining at a tremendous rate.

Lara dove in, leaving Ioan’s shout of protest behind.

She hit muddy earth with a squelch, breath knocked away. Silence rang out around her, more than just a cessation of music. It had a quality that said an instant earlier the air had been full of voices and laughter, and that surprise had taken delight away.

She ached with the impact against the ground, armor jabbing her uncomfortably, but not badly enough to force her to move. For a brief eternity she lay where she was, facedown in damp earth, struggling for breath. She thought she might be glad to lie there forever, except an uncertain voice said, “Lady, are you okay?”

Lara flipped onto her back in a spray of wet sand. Sunlight burst in her eyes, blinding her before a ring of children leaned over her, curious faces blocking out the sun. A dozen or so, more children than she’d seen in total within the Barrow-lands, and all of them with ordinary round human ears and varied skin tones and eyes that ranged from brown-black to pale blue.

“Are you okay?” a little boy asked again. He was dripping: all of the children were, despite the brilliant sunlight.

“I think so.” Lara sounded hoarse, but no discordance rang with her answer, relief in itself. “Where am I?”

“The farm park,” the boy said. “Where’d you come from?”

“Fairyland,” Lara said without thinking, and a little girl smiled brilliantly.

“Are you wearing fairy clothes? They’re all shiny!”

“That’s armor, dummy,” the boy said scornfully. “Like the Power Rangers wear.”

Lara sat up, the ring of children moving slightly to keep her surrounded. Sunlight glittered off a metal slide only a few feet away, her landing-place the sandbox at its foot. Swing sets and jungle gyms were strewn about, children arrested in their playing to watch the gathering around Lara. “The farm park? Is that in Boston?”

The little boy looked nonplussed. “We live in Arlington. Are you crazy?”

“I don’t think so. Thank you for …” Lara trailed off, words lost under a barrage of fairyland questions from the girls and a growing interest in her possible insanity from the boys. Her hand went to her hip, looking for a cell phone that was still back in her office at Lord Matthew’s. She encountered an empty scabbard instead, and dismay seized her. “I really must look like I’m from fairyland.”

The children scattered as running footsteps heralded an adult’s arrival. Lara lurched to her feet in time to be greeted by a scowling, worried woman who snapped the children farther away before demanding, “Where did you come from? A pool full of water fell out of the sky, and then you did. I didn’t seen a—an airplane?” She looked skyward, and Lara did, too, remembering urban legends she’d read about scuba divers found in the middle of forest fires, dropped there by helicopters scooping seawater to battle the fires with. She wished she had a similar story to explain away her arrival.

“I’m not sure how I got here. I’m sorry, but could I possibly borrow a cell phone?” she asked, abruptly hoping she could brazen it out. “I left mine at work yesterday.”

The little girl grabbed the woman’s hand. “I think she’s magic, Mommy. She says she was in fairyland.”

Lara winced, painfully aware that “being in fairyland” sounded like a euphemism for drug use. The woman pursed her lips, looking Lara up and down, then wordlessly drew a cell phone out of her purse and offered it. “Thank you,” Lara whispered, and edged out of the sandbox to sit on the bottom of the slide as she dialed the only phone number she had memorized.

“Lord Matthew’s Bespoke Tailoring Shop. This is Cynthia, how may I help you?”

“Oh thank goodness, Cynthia.” Lara laughed in relief. “This is Lara. I’ve had the most incredibly strange night, and I’ll tell you about it, but right now I was wondering if you could grab my jeans and shirt from yesterday and bring them to, um, the Arlington farm park? I really need a change of clothes.”

“Lara?” Cynthia’s voice cracked, then turned angry, clashing with the sound of bells. “This isn’t funny. Who is this?”

“It’s—What? This is Lara, Cynthia. Lara Jansen. How many other Laras do you know?”

“I don’t know who the hell you think you are, but call this number again and I’ll report you to the police,” Cynthia snapped. “Lara Jansen disappeared seventeen months ago.”