Wayfinder

Eight

“You should come to the village,” Braith said very softly. “The healer will wish to bring Hafgan there, and your presence and explanations will be desired. Almost none of us have met a mortal, and none at all have seen a truthseeker in years beyond counting. We would like to speak with you.”

From the undercurrents in Braith’s speech, Lara thought they would like to swallow her whole, as if she were a vessel of hope that could be drained to sustain them. And when she was emptied, the staff would be theirs for the taking, a more cynical part of her psyche added. She glanced at Ioan’s barely breathing form, then exhaled softly. “I would be honored.” That was true, and gave her a moment to think before shaking her head. “But we only have three days from this morning to complete our … quest. There’ll be time to visit when we’re done, though.”

“Are you mad?” Aerin’s voice broke on the question. “The quest is over. We cannot go on without him!”

“Something you should have thought of before riding roughshod into hostile territory,” Lara snapped. “We have to go on without him. Just because no Seelie goes into the healing waters doesn’t mean it’s impossible. And I’m not one of you at all. Different rules might apply.”

“But if they do not.” Braith’s gaze fastened on Lara. “If you do not, we may forever lose our chance to regain a homeland. The Unseelie people are already weary, Truthseeker. We can’t afford such a blow.”

“Then don’t tell them all what I’m doing, and we’ll do our best to survive. Aerin, can you ride?”

“The wound heals,” Aerin replied shortly. “I can.”

Anger expanded in Lara’s chest. “Let me rephrase that. Will you ride, or will I leave you here with—Hafgan—and these Unseelie while I go ahead?”

Aerin bared her teeth, but climbed to her feet. “I will manage.”

“Then we’re going.” Lara spoke decisively, though uncertainty made a pit of discomfort in her stomach. She didn’t like abandoning Ioan, and liked the prospect of riding through Unseelie lands unescorted even less. But reluctant or not, she saw no other option. It would take days in her own world for a wound like Ioan’s to heal. Even if magic accelerated the process, there was no telling how quickly he might recover. The delay could be more than they could afford.

Resolved, she waved Braith over, changing places with her. “Hold him, keep the dirt out of the wound if you can. Keep pressure on it, and keep it higher so it doesn’t bleed as much. I don’t know if it’ll help, but it won’t hurt. And if you have any way to send messages, please warn everyone that we’re riding to the coast and shouldn’t be bothered. I don’t want another incident.”

The last was directed more at Aerin than Braith, but Aerin ignored her, remounting awkwardly and maintaining stony indifference as Lara fetched her own horse and climbed up. Not until they were well on the path again, leaving a protesting Braith behind, did Aerin bark, “What manner of people are these, who attack a lone traveler in farmlands, and then all but slaughter their own king? No wonder the sea rose to drown them. It must have been Rhiannon’s way of keeping down numbers, the way one might drown rats.”

“Aerin,” Lara said half under her breath, “this would be a good time to shut up.”

It was hardly possible the Seelie woman heard her, but Aerin gave her a sharp look and went quiet. Her point, though, was a good one, and Lara thought about it as they cantered over low hills with only the triple beat of their horses’ hooves as their sound track. Braith had seen two fair-haired warriors, she’d said. That might have reflected Ioan as he’d once been, but no more, and not for a long time. It wasn’t impossible that the four Unseelie fighters had seen Lara in the distance, but she’d been far enough behind to not constitute a threat, and Ioan had been in the midst of the fight.

Lara drew up suddenly, sick certainty lodging in her gut. “Merrick is here.”

“What?” Aerin’s face was white with pain as she brought her horse around. “No. These fields and mountains are within the Barrow-lands. Emyr would have scried him, if he was here.”

Lara pointed toward the still-distant sea. “Not if he was taking refuge in the water. He’s Unseelie, right? So they should embrace him, at least in theory. And probably block Emyr’s scrying while they were at it. No, I’m right, Aerin. I mean, could you ever mistake Ioan for fair-haired?”

Reluctance shifted Aerin’s features and she shook her head. Lara nodded sharply in turn. “Someone made them see him as a Seelie warrior, not Unseelie. It could have been a glamour he cast himself, but why would he do that? It’d be asking for trouble. But Merrick casts illusions, and that shovel might have removed one more obstacle between himself and ruling Annwn.”

“The Barrow-lands,” Aerin muttered.

“They both sound true as names. Furthermore.” Lara pounded a fist into her palm. “Furthermore, if without Ioan we really can’t get to the Drowned Lands, then Merrick’s down three rivals for the throne and all that’s left is Emyr.”

That, finally, drew Aerin’s concern. “We should go back.”

“No. We have to go on. Emyr’s got an army surrounding him right now, but Merrick’s Unseelie. He might be able to enter the Drowned Lands himself and murder Dafydd and Hafgan, who are defenseless, both. Besides,” Lara added hopefully, “maybe the waters will heal your shoulder instantly.”

Aerin spat the peace salve away. “Or suck my life from the wound.”

“For pity’s sake. If you’re representative of Seelie/Unseelie relations, it won’t matter if the Unseelie get their lands back. You’re going to end up killing each other anyway.”

Aerin’s smile was not nice. “Let me fervently hope that is truth, Lara Jansen. That it is fact you intend to draw in stone.”

Lara cast her gaze to the heavens, then rode again for the shore, this time in silence.

A road, silvered beneath the sand, led straight into the water. Aerin reined up so far from the ocean’s edge that Lara laughed. Her horse trotted down to stand ankle-deep in the soft tide, dropped its nose to investigate the waves, then gave her a disgusted look, as if scolding her for the water’s brackishness.

“There are freshwater pools here,” Aerin announced stiffly. Lara, still smiling, glanced back at her, then nudged the horse back up the beach. It blew into the pool Aerin showed them, then, satisfied, drank noisily. Lara felt as though it was saying You see? This is how water ought to be. She made a sound of agreement, then slid from its back and turned to contemplate the ocean.

“Ioan’s element is water. This would have been easier with him, he could have kept a bubble of water away, kept air around us, so we could follow the road.”

“Or he could have let the water collapse and drown us both.”

“Which would have done him no good at all,” Lara said impatiently. “The first time Emyr fails to raise you with the scrying spell, he’ll ride in and destroy the Unseelie city. Ioan wouldn’t risk it.”

“Even if he thought it might mean wielding that staff himself?”

Lara bent her arm over a shoulder to touch it, then let her hand fall, unable to argue the possibility. “Tell me again what happened to Rhiannon. She drowned saving Merrick, right? It wasn’t that the sea reached up and snatched her.”

Irritation flashed through Aerin’s voice: “Even the Drowned Lands aren’t so vindictive. Yes, she went into the water and never returned. Nor have any Seelie since her.”

“How many have tried?”

Stony silence answered her. Lara glanced at the Seelie woman, whose jaw was set with resolution. “All right. Ioan said there were trials to be passed to enter the Drowned Lands. Don’t you usually have to announce yourself, before a trial?” She clawed the staff off her back and stood contemplating its ivory carvings for a few seconds.

They were beautiful, but they were merely border patterns, not even the animals or mythological figures she’d seen depicted in Celtic artwork. They had no story hidden in them, a thought which she held on to until it came back as clear music, undistorted by falsehood. There were no hidden answers there.

“Who do you think you’ll announce yourself to?” Aerin sounded interested despite herself.

Lara looked up from her contemplation of the staff, wobbling it in her hands. “The Drowned Lands themselves, I guess. Do you think they’ll recognize this?” Without letting herself fully consider the action, she drove it deep into the sand.

Aerin’s howl of alarm was drowned beneath a cry of protest that rose from the land itself. The staff flared heat, searing Lara’s palm. She jerked away with a shout, and a wave of triumph erupted from the staff as it stood free for a handful of seconds.

The sand beneath her feet collapsed, a divot opening up into the earth. Water spilled in, suspending particles and grabbing at Lara’s ankles with quicksand intensity. Inside a heartbeat it had risen to her knees, clinging and terrifying. Lara seized the staff again, panic making a tiny concession to bewilderment: she was sinking, but the staff hadn’t moved an inch, remaining a solitary solid thing in a melting beach. “Knock it off! Stop it! Stop it!”

The staff shuddered, resisting. Lara clamped her hands around it harder, though the heated patterns already threatened to scar her palms. “God damn it, I found you and you’ll do what I say! Knock! It! Off!”

As suddenly as it had collapsed, the sand beneath her surged upward again, water spraying out to glisten against the earth before it sank harmlessly away. The rising ground took Lara with it, as if she’d been thrown into a game of blanket toss. Her knees buckled and she fell to them, but held on to the staff. Its heat was gone, though grumbling resentment washed through it. Lara dropped her forehead against it, panting for breath. “That’s better. Thank you.”

“You speak to it as if it lives. What …” Aerin trailed off under the sound of rushing water, and Lara looked up to watch the seas part along the silvered road that stretched into them. The ocean bubbled and spat, pulling open in an utterly unnatural manner. The Red Sea might have looked as the Barrow-lands bay did, pulling apart to leave a damp, glimmering pathway into the deeps. Not even fish were left gasping in the air; fistsful of water reached out, clawed them back into their retreating walls, and sent them swimming to safety. Waves continued to roll forward, splashing the beach to either side of the watery avenue, but where the sea defied physics, the tide merely roiled and crashed against itself, fighting to connect again with the space it had been banished from.

A man, expected only because Moses had once walked a similarly empty channel, strode out of the depths.

Hysteria swept Lara, cold sweat and a high laugh both breaking. She scrambled to her feet, unwilling to face what approached while on her knees. That was a posture reserved for devotion, and she was not—was not, despite every picture storybook she’d read as a child—was not in the presence of a literal, God-sent reenactment of the Red Seas. Not here. Not in Annwn, a land of elfin immortals whose own gods were, in her faith, pagan impossibilities. There was something else, another truth to be had, another way to explain the parting waters and the man coming from their heart. Her God had not sent him.

If He had, though, He had done so with an eye for artistry.

The man approaching wasn’t in the water; he was of the water. It shaped him, and each step he took left sprays behind even as they also pulled up water from the road’s surface. His hair was wild and white, not so much sea foam as the tide itself, alive with motion. His skin changed as Lara gaped, shifting in shade from Caribbean blue to slate gray and all the hues of ocean in between, so looking on him was watching an endless chase of color. He might have been Poseidon, except every depiction of that sea god Lara had seen was of a broad-shouldered, stern-looking bearded being armed with a trident and sometimes graced with a fish tail.

This creature was elfin through and through. Narrow-hipped, slim-shouldered, with long limbs and upswept ears. He carried no weapon. He didn’t need to: Lara had no doubt the ocean itself was all the armament he required.

And like the ocean, his canted eyes were filled with stormy potential, and his voice with the crash of waves. “How dare you strike at the heart of this land again? How dare you lift that weapon, and on my shores?”

“I need safe passage to the Drowned Lands.” Nothing gave Lara the right to make such a preposterous demand, but it came out steadily, even calmly. “Believe me, I have no intention of using the staff as a weapon. It has its own ideas, but for the moment I can control it.”

The sea man eyed her, air growing damper and cooler with his regard. “ ‘For the moment.’ ”

Lara cursed the impulse that had made her use the phrase. Cursed the truth that was her gift, in other words, and sighed as she recognized that not admitting to the caveat would have sounded a lie to her own ears. “It’s powerful. It has a will of its own.”

His skin, his gaze, his entire being, darkened as though a storm came over the ocean. “You have no idea what you bear in your hands, mortal woman.”

Lara looked at the staff, then over her shoulder at Aerin, hoping for guidance. Instead she found Aerin on her knees, wide-eyed and pale, knuckles pressed over her mouth. A posture reserved for devotion, Lara remembered, and her heart knocked. Aerin had shown no such reverence in discussing Rhiannon, whom she’d called their goddess. Whatever the elfin sea lord was, it was evidently well beyond Aerin’s expectations.

Lara turned back to the water-creature, just as glad she’d had no expectations to be shattered. “You’re probably right. I probably don’t. But I found it so I could heal with it, if it’s possible. If it’s not, I’ll bring it back to my world and hide it again rather than let it be used here to do more harm.”

“That staff should not be taken from Annwn or the seas,” he snarled. Lara could see Emyr in him suddenly, the two of them both creatures of such elemental power and great age that arrogance was their greatest stock in trade. But the sea man relented a fraction, not precisely softer, but indulging in a clear curiosity: “I hear truth in your words, mortal female. Are you an arbiter of justice?”

“I’m a truthseeker,” Lara said cautiously. “My name’s Lara, Lara Jansen. I don’t know if I’m an arbiter of justice. I do know that two men of royal blood are somewhere in the Drowned Lands, and without them I’m never going to find out the truth of what happened to Annwn, or have a chance at setting it right. And I know this staff is God damned dangerous.” Twice. That was twice in ten minutes she’d used a phrase that almost never passed her lips. Kelly, back at home, thought Lara’s reluctance to damn in God’s name was quaintly amusing. In the Barrow-lands, though, Lara had learned that naming the Holy Trinity was a magic in and of itself, and the curse carried a particular weight. Lara turned a brief glower at the staff, as though it had prompted her to swear, then gave her attention back to the watery man. “I’d be just as happy to finish what I need to do with it and give it to someone with a record of being able to handle its power.”

“And who would that be?” This time real interest lightened the sea elf’s voice, and Lara wondered if answering would be condemnatory. She was certain, though, that not answering would carry a price of its own, and after a moment shrugged.

“Another mortal. A poet named Oisín.”

“Mortals,” the water creature growled, then, more approvingly, “Poets. There may be wisdom in that; poets cross the boundaries of age and time. But that staff is not meant to be ruled by anyone, Truthseeker. Not for long.”

Lara hesitated. “Not even by one such as you?”

Something complex happened in his eyes, ancient sorrow rising to mix with chagrin and unequivocal acceptance. “I was never meant to rule it at all. I learned that long ago.”

The corner of Lara’s mouth curved up. “All the more reason to help me get into the Drowned Lands, so I can rescue the prince, save the world, and return it to neutral hands.”

“Neutral.” The sea man’s eyebrows, barely noticeable until he spoke with them, rose. “This poet is neutral?”

“I think he loved her. Rhiannon, the one whose staff it had been.”

The sea lord stiffened, the water coursing beneath his skin going still. Lara bit her lower lip, then rushed on. “I think he went to great lengths to protect it so no one else could use it. No one unworthy. Maybe it’s not neutrality, but it’s a different path from the one it seems Emyr and Hafgan took. It looks more like neutrality, and from where I’m standing, that might be close enough.”

Slowly, incrementally, he relaxed again, until his was a body in motion once more, all the moods of the ocean reflected in him. “An arbiter indeed. Tell me, mortal woman, Lara Jansen, Truthseeker. The journey into the Drowned Lands is not a gentle one. Are you prepared to undertake the trials?”

“I am.” A twinge of honesty struck her and she added, “I don’t understand what that means, really, but I’m willing to try. This land, Annwn, it’s damaged. Even I can see that, and I’ve only been here a little while. Oisín made a prophecy about me. He called me a truthseeker and a worldbreaker, and said I’d find the way to mend the past. The only way I can see to do that is going in there.” She nodded at the sea beyond him, marveling briefly that she’d become accustomed, in a few short minutes, to the way it held itself apart from the silver road. “I want to help,” she said quietly. “Please help me to help.”

“And your companion?” The sea lord took apparent notice of Aerin for the first time, and Lara heard her flinch to attention.

“I will join her if you’ll permit me, Lord.” Aerin’s soprano was ragged with emotion, and she came forward roughly to stand beside Lara when he gestured for her.

He pressed his thumbs against their foreheads, a cool watery touch. Power staggered Lara, power unlike any she’d encountered so far. The entirety of the world’s oceans were in the caress, thundering, calm, corrosive, sustaining; he encompassed all of that in his fragile elfin form. Sea life in all its myriad shapes, with its cleverness and dull-wittedness, inquisitive or reclusive, light-filled and shadowed, ran through him so that he was their life, and they were his. Temperature spread through his touch, from the heat of sunlight on the water to the great blocky ice floes that hid black water from the light for decades on end.

“You will see the lands as they are,” he said mournfully. “Not as they once were, but the ruin that they are now, for even I cannot bring them back to their glory. But you will walk among the ruins as though you walk through air, and you will touch them as if they are dry land raised from the waters. You will survive the drowning, Truthseeker, but only the Hundreds will tell whether you survive the trials. You have three days before the water takes you.”

He dropped his hands. Lara nearly fell as the surge of power retreated. She was left gaping after him as he returned to the depths without another word, and not until the silver road was empty again did she dare to ask, “Who was he?”

“That was Llyr,” Aerin whispered. “Father of the sea, and father of my people, for he is Rhiannon’s father, too.”