Wayfinder

Twenty-one

Sunlight, ferocious and bright, was accompanied by shrieks of human astonishment. Summer colors flashed in Lara’s vision as the horse stumbled to a halt, obviously bewildered. Well-kept emerald grass spread out around them, littered with goggle-eyed picnickers sprawling on blankets beneath droopy-branched trees. Low chain links made barriers between greenery and paved pathways, and a familiar cityscape rose beyond the park’s boundaries.

Aerin’s horse leaped through the gap a handful of seconds behind them, making people scramble aside, though the more enterprising among them snatched up cell phones and cameras even as they gawked. Aerin reined up hard, and for the first time Lara heard her words as a distinctly different language, though the sentiment was clear enough: “What the hell?!”

“Glamours!” Lara gave Dafydd’s ribs a desperate hug, hoping he would feel it through the armor. “Dafydd, tell Aerin to work a human glamour, now!”

He barely missed a beat before his dumbfounded voice lifted in command. Liquid language, full of wet sounds, entirely incomprehensible, though Lara still caught their meaning. She had heard the Seelie tongue as English in the Barrow-lands; it made a certain perverse sense that in her own world it would revert to its own sound. That would be a difficulty later, but in the moment Lara reached past Dafydd and caught the horse’s reins, pulling it around to watch Aerin.

The worldwalking door shriveled behind her, shimmering gold effect barely visible in full daylight. Aerin’s countenance shifted, sending sparks of a headache through the back of Lara’s skull, but she ground her teeth and kept her gaze fixed on the Seelie woman, willing herself to see the glamour as it settled into place. The changes were subtle, Aerin’s upswept ears dulling to a more human roundness, her elegant long features broadening until her cheekbones and chin were less dramatically sharp, and her new-leaf green eyes faded to a darker shade. With her shorn white hair, she was still remarkable, but not-quite-inhuman. She gave Lara a panicked look, clearly seeking approval.

Relief knotted Lara’s gut and she nodded once as the horse came around in a full circle. Half the people who’d seen their entrance were on their feet now, cameras and cell phones recording, and more people were running their way, voices lifted in curious excitement. For the first time since they’d recovered Dafydd, Lara wished she was in the saddle, so she could stand in the stirrups. Instead she whispered, “For God’s sake, keep the horse still,” and drew her legs up.

Any untrained mortal horse would, she was sure, react badly to her shifting weight, and to the pressure of her feet against its backside as she slowly came to standing, one hand on Dafydd’s shoulder for balance. The Seelie animal, though, simply settled into his stance, becoming solid and comfortable as she stood. Lara had a moment of shrill amusement as she remembered the enchantment sticking her to the horse, and it was with more confidence than she’d thought she could command that she raised her voice.

“Good people of Boston! You see before you the prowess and dignity of a prince! I would like to invite you to Pennsic, a war of the kingdoms to be held in the great state of Pennsylvania! And with this invitation delivered, we must bid you adieu!” She slid down to sitting and wrapped her arms around Dafydd’s middle, trying to fight down hysterical giggles. “Go! Go go go! Go! Glamour us out of their vision if you can, but for heaven’s sake, ride!”

Astonished cheers erupted behind them as they charged across the Common and into invisibility.

“What,” Dafydd asked, mystified, “is Pennsic?” His glamour was at full strength, ripping at the world, and sending sour music through Lara’s bones, but it did disguise them. Of that, at least, she was confident. She’d felt it come over them, twisting her stomach and making her sick, but the fade-out had probably been as dramatic to viewers as their arrival had been. Lara imagined there were dozens of people searching for mirrors and other effects to explain their theatrical performance. Part of her wanted to search the Internet to see what stories people were already concocting. But once out of sight thanks to the glamour, they had merely ducked into one of a multitude of secluded areas in the fifty-acre park. Summer green meant heavily leafed low-hanging branches, which made excellent screens even without magic’s aid.

Lara slid off the horse all the way to sitting on the ground, knocking the staff loose from its bindings with the impact. She let it lie where it fell, looping her arms around her knees and dropping her head instead of rescuing it. Her heart and breath came hard, like she’d been running, not riding, and she gulped air before responding. “I really don’t know. It’s something where people dress up in armor and participate in a mock war. A cabdriver told me about it a few weeks ago, when I opened a worldwalking window myself. It was the only story I could think of. Could you … let most of the glamour go? Maybe keep enough to make people glance past us, but being inside one …” She shuddered, head still pressed against her knees. “It feels like the world is shredding. It keeps screaming at me. Nails on chalkboards and steam whistles and teakettles and—”

The cacophony faded abruptly, leaving comparatively mild dissonance in its place. Lara sagged and swallowed against bile, finally daring to look up. Dafydd retained his headache-inducing glamour, humanity a facade over his elfin features, but the improvement as a whole was indescribable. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. I should have thought to do it before.” Dafydd dismounted and nodded for Aerin to do so as well. “It was a well-told story, Lara. Four sentences, not one of them a lie, but together creating a context that wasn’t true, either.”

Lara smiled tightly. “I hate it when people do that, but I hate telling lies even more. Aerin, can you understand me?”

The Seelie woman flinched, then nodded as she took to the ground. “Well enough. Your words sound strange to my ears. I cannot understand Dafydd at all, though I can hear that he speaks the same language you do.”

Lara’s shoulders dropped in relief. Aerin’s speech still sounded more liquid than usual, but she was comprehensible now. “You sound strange, too, but a minute ago I couldn’t understand you at all. Did you have to learn English when you got here, Dafydd?”

His eyebrows rose. “I did. The worldwalking spell doesn’t offer translation services. I thought, though, that your magic did.”

“It does. It just took a minute to start. Maybe it was the shock of transition? Anyway, good job, both of you, on the glamours,” Lara said. “People will probably have photos of you before they set in, but more will be of you looking human. I don’t know what else to do about that.”

Aerin, carefully and in English, said, “ ‘Photos’?”

Lara cast a helpless glance at Dafydd. “Instant artistic renditions. Perfect ones, so looking at them is like being in front of us. I’ll show you later, if there is a later. Dafydd, what happened?”

“I hoped you would tell me. I worked no worldwalking spell.” He repeated himself in the Seelie language, earning an exasperated look from Aerin.

“Of course you didn’t. It was Ioan, eager to separate us.”

“While he rode into the back side of the Seelie army?” Lara asked dubiously. “Dafydd, can you get us back?”

“Yes, but not immediately. The magic …” He sighed and sat down beside Lara, gesturing for Aerin to do the same. “The spell takes some time to prepare, Lara. Hours with very little other distraction.”

“As Ioan had while we rode,” Aerin said.

“Yes,” Lara said, aggravated, “but Emyr’s already upset with him, and he looks like an Unseelie. He’d have to be suicidal to go in there without our support, and I don’t think he’s spent this many centuries playing the role of Hafgan just to get himself killed now. There must be another explanation.” Determination, if not absolute truth, sang through it, and she subsided grumpily.

“I had the spell prepared the first time we traveled to the Barrow-lands,” Dafydd said mildly, as if there’d been no disagreement. “All that was required to trigger it was the will to do so. Any of us coming to your world would have that ready, so in times of great danger we could escape easily.”

“Unless you got arrested and thrown in a human jail full of iron and steel,” Lara muttered.

A smile flickered over Dafydd’s mouth. “Indeed. The point, I fear, is that having been unprepared to come here, neither am I prepared to take us back. We need somewhere that we can be certain of privacy so I can gather my power and return us to the Barrow-lands.”

“Kelly’s apartment. We can go there for privacy, and you can get us all home from the …”

Home. She heard the word choice just as Dafydd did, though it garnered a slow hopeful smile from him and a gut-wrenching sense of displacement for her. “Back to the Barrow-lands,” Lara whispered. “You can bring us back to the Barrow-lands from there.”

“I believe so.” Dafydd’s voice remained steady despite the bright light of hope. “Lara, is the glamour still bothering you? You look pale.”

It was an excuse, and she knew it: a way for her to move beyond the astonishing reference to the Barrow-lands as home. Lara took it, grateful. “It’s not as bad as it was, but I wouldn’t mind getting away from it. I don’t know what to do about the horses, Dafydd. I can call Kelly—well, we can turn up on her doorstep, since I don’t have a phone or any money on me—but we can’t put two horses in her apartment.”

“I believe that will be unnecessary.” Aerin reached up to pat her horse’s nose. “They’re intelligent enough to remain hidden if we explain the need, but I can encourage them to, as well. The same sort of enchantment that keeps you in the saddle,” she explained. “A staying spell. A glamour cast over their presence should keep them comfortably out of sight until we return for them, and will allow you to escape the magic’s discomfort. Is there water nearby?”

“Nowhere as secluded as this, but there’s plenty of it. The frog pond is …” Lara glanced through the leaves like she could see the city and orient herself, then waved a hand. “That way, I think. Should we bring them there?”

“They’ll do well enough on their own, with glamours keeping them from prying eyes.” Aerin stood, dusting grass from her armor, and caught the horses’ bridles to draw the animals close and murmur to them. Lara watched a moment, then dropped her shoulders with a sigh.

“I wish I knew how much time has passed. You said it could easily be ten years here for a day there, if there was no spell worked to keep time in approximate alignment. I’d been there three days, Dafydd. My mother could be dead.”

He took her hand, fingers gentle around hers. “I don’t think so. The skyline is still familiar, isn’t it? In thirty years it would change. Even if it was still distinguishable, it would change. I think it’s been less time than that.”

“I hope so.” It didn’t matter that she’d been aware that following Merrick between worlds meant she might never return to the time and home she’d known. It was still a trepidatious thought. “You and Aerin should probably leave your armor here, too. Or glamour it into looking like normal clothes, anyway.” She winced at the idea, preparing for another headache, but Dafydd, chuckling, began to strip the metal garb away.

“I’ve been arrested once while wearing Seelie armor. I’d rather not risk it again.”

“Perhaps I should remain behind.” Aerin stood between the horses, hands on their bridles and increasing discomfort on her face. “I know nothing of your world, Truthseeker. I might be more hindrance than help.”

“And someone might accidentally stumble on you here, or get stupid out on the green and pick a fight you felt you had to stop,” Lara said. “Glamours or not, new world or not, I’d rather you were with us. Strength in numbers.”

“I would have no cause to interfere with mortal battles,” Aerin said in confusion. “Why should I do such a thing?”

“Imagine a man choosing to attack a defenseless woman, Aerin,” Dafydd said after a moment. “Would you stand aside and watch it happen?”

“Of course not, but who would do that? What woman wouldn’t fight back? Surely even mortals have some ability to defe …” Aerin let the words fade away as she tried not to scowl too obviously at Lara. “Perhaps they don’t, then. Very well. I will accompany you, but I will not leave my sword behind.”

“Well, it’s not a concealed weapon,” Lara said uncertainly. “But I’m not sure what the police would think of it. Maybe you should glamour it to look like a purse.”

“A purse.”

“A handbag. Like some of the women on the green were carrying.” Dizziness crept over Lara as Aerin begrudgingly worked the magic, sword blinking and twisting in Lara’s vision as it tried to convince her it was a leather purse, and not a weapon at all. “That’s better. As long as I don’t look at it.” She picked up her own staff and got to her feet, dismayed. “I don’t know what to do about this. I think carrying it glamoured would make me sick.”

“We’ll tell them we’re on the way to Pennsic,” Dafydd said with a grin. “Come, then. Let us find Kelly, and refuge.”

The Barrow-lands were easier to adapt to than Lara’s own world. Pastoral, forested magic and slender alien warriors were less of a shock than mid-afternoon Boston traffic, or the myriad people in all sizes and colors. Aerin, usually so confident, wedged herself between Lara and Dafydd without seeming to realize she’d done it. Her eyes were round with alarm, mouth pinched tight as people swept past them by the hundreds, and she held her purse with a white-knuckled grip on a strap that Lara knew full well was the sword’s hilt.

Dafydd was murmuring to her in their native language, narrating the brash world she was encountering: that man in the twisted hat is from a land called India, that smell is a human favorite named pizza, these noisy boxes are cars.

“I know that one,” Aerin said in a harsh voice. “Lara told Ioan of them. She did not say they were so loud. How can you live like this?” She turned accusing eyes on Lara. “So many people, so much sound.”

“I grew up around here. I’d never been anywhere as quiet as the citadel until I came to the Barrow-lands with Dafydd. It is too loud,” Lara agreed, then caught Dafydd’s arm behind Aerin’s back and pointed up the street with her free hand. “Newspaper vendor. I don’t have any money, but at least I can see what day it is before he chases me off. Don’t let Aerin panic.”

“I do not panic!”

Lara flashed a smile at the glamoured pair and darted ahead of them, stopping beneath the vendor’s canopy. He shared a stall with a hot dog seller, and her stomach rumbled as she peered at magazine covers and newspaper dates.

It was reassuringly, unexpectedly familiar. Only four days had passed in both worlds. Lara picked up one of the papers with a shaking laugh and turned it over, glancing over the lead stories while the vendor gave her a warning look. Guilty, she started to put it down, but a headline caught her eye: Extreme Surgery Troubles Doctors.

Below it was a photograph of Ioan ap Annwn.