Wayfinder

Twenty-nine

“What?” Dafydd’s faint question was all but lost under Ioan’s urgent, “No. No, he can’t be. Without him we have no answers, Father. No way of discovering history’s truth.”

“What does it matter? The Seelie king is dead and his son, my heir, sits on his thr …” Hafgan’s smugness faded to a slow frown. He repeated, “I saw you crowned,” then turned to Lara, angry incomprehension written on his features.

“Tell me what you saw.” Lara heard cool command in her own voice, so remote she barely recognized it, and king or not, Hafgan acquiesced.

More than acquiesced: a twist of his wrist brought living flame up from the dust-covered floor, each lick dancing apart to become an image. Armies clashed together, flame rolling over itself as one side overwhelmed the other or fell back, very near to the edge of the chasm protecting the Unseelie city.

It was eerily silent; this was no scrying spell, no method of looking across or back or forward in time, but only the reconstruction of memory in an element that didn’t carry voices. Water carried sound, if poorly; enhanced by magic it made a viable conductor, but flame had only its own snapping, crackling song as it ate away at the fuel provided. Without that fuel, all it provided was imagery, noiseless when it should have been ear-splitting.

The focus came closer, picking out individuals: Hafgan rode with his army, intent on reaching Emyr, whose icy pale countenance was somehow reflected in warm flame. But before Hafgan reached the Seelie king, Dafydd slammed through the Unseelie ranks, riding from behind them, his presence unseen by Hafgan until he was already past. Astounded Unseelie fell back; delighted Seelie made a path, silent faces lifted in cheers.

Dafydd ap Caerwyn rode straight for Emyr, and slammed a sword through the sovereign’s chest when he reached him. Lara, knowing it wasn’t true, knowing it to be impossible, still gasped at the impact, and Aerin let go a child’s cry of horror.

On the battlefield, delight turned to dismay, cheers to howls, as Dafydd caught the falling king and tore the silver circlet from his brow. He jammed it onto his own head, triumphant in the midst of a mob that could no longer be called an army. Even Hafgan drew his horse up, too agape to ride on, and so no one was there to stop Ioan ap Annwn as he followed in Dafydd’s wake, and slew his brother with the same efficient brutality Dafydd had shown Emyr.

This time the yelp of dismay was Lara’s. She jerked forward, reaching for the fiery images against all sense, against everything she knew. Dafydd drew her back, his hands icy on her shoulders as they all gawked, horrified, at unfolding events.

There was no triumph on the flame-made Ioan’s face, no joy as there’d been in Dafydd’s. He slid from his horse, bearing Dafydd’s body to the ground. It was too late by far to show Emyr such gentleness, but Ioan stood when both bodies lay at his feet, and lifted his silent voice to the stunned armies.

“The war is over,” Hafgan echoed, putting words into the simulacrum’s mouth. “Emyr and Dafydd are dead. I am Ioan ap Caerwyn, changed but still the last son of the shining citadel, and I will have no more of this war. We will bear these bodies back to Caerwyn and put them to rest, and there I will take the crown and embrace Seelie and Unseelie alike, so both my adopted people and my blood people might finally know peace. Do not defy me, my Seelie family. There are still far more Unseelie than there are of you, and I will have peace at any cost.”

Flame melted away, leaving Hafgan staring at Lara with angry expectation. “Three days,” he said, his voice his own again. “Three days later, three days ago, Ioan was crowned in Caerwyn, with Emyr and Dafydd buried in the barrows as they ought to have been. These two cannot be here.”

“All of that was Merrick.” Even the attempt at further explanation defeated her. Lara took Dafydd’s hand instead, trying to impart comfort. He flinched at her touch, then turned a suddenly haggard gaze on her.

“Is my father dead?”

Lara pressed one hand against her eyes, then shook her head. “I don’t know. If I were Merrick, I’d have murdered Emyr in your guise, then built the illusion of Ioan coming for you, and switched from one role to the other when they came together. But I don’t know. The way flame dances, Dafydd … it disguises any hope I might have of seeing through the illusions. If I’d been there, maybe …”

Hafgan waited a heartbeat, then two, before bursting out with, “Merrick? My own son sits on the Seelie throne, behind Ioan’s face?”

“What bitter dregs those must be for Merrick,” Dafydd said with a thin smile. “To plot and plan so long and be left wearing another man’s mask when victory is in his hand. The war is not over, Hafgan. I will not allow Merrick to sit on my father’s throne for long, no matter what the cost to myself or the Barrow-lands.”

“You cannot be such a fool,” Ioan protested. “Emyr is dead, our chances of learning the past’s truth have slipped away, and you would still continue with these endless skirmishes, the eternal war? To what end, Dafydd? To what purpose?”

Dafydd whispered, “I might have let it go, if it were you. Changed or not, beholden to the Unseelie or not, beneath it all you are my brother and Rhiannon’s son. Had you come to the throne of—”

“Of Annwn,” Ioan put in strongly, and Dafydd broke off to stare at him a moment before continuing.

“Had you come to Emyr’s throne I might have found my way past the differences between us. But Merrick has tricked and murdered his way there, and I will not let it stand. He was my brother, closer to me than you ever were, and this betrayal runs too deep. My father is dead.”

“Is he?” Aerin asked the question this time, with more grief than either Dafydd or Ioan had shown. Her green eyes were red-rimmed, a show of emotion that seemed tragically mortal to Lara, and the hope in her face was more desperate yet.

Lara, for the second time, whispered, “I don’t know. It feels like all of Annwn believes it, and I can’t tell if it’s the land or the truth whose music I’m hearing.”

Hafgan sneered. “Perhaps you do not wish to know. A truthseeker is of no use if she refuses to accept her power.”

A sharp laugh broke from Lara’s throat. “It really has been a long time since you’ve dealt with a truthseeker, if you can make yourself believe that. I’ve spent a lifetime wondering why people don’t just accept the truth. I don’t think there’s any comfort in not knowing. But it doesn’t matter how I twist it in my head, ‘Emyr is alive, Emyr is dead,’ neither one sings clear. So neither is true or they both are.” She sharpened her gaze on the Unseelie king. “The sleepers under the sea. Are they alive?”

“Yes.”

Discord crashed through his answer and Lara released another sharp laugh. “But do they live?”

“No.”

The same wrenching music played, and Lara dropped her forehead against the staff, hanging on for a few long seconds. “So they’re dead.”

This time Hafgan gave no answer at all, and when she looked up again, irritated confusion had settled across his face. The others were so silent as to be statues, not even their breath stirring the air as she turned to them. “There’s a chance, then. If I can’t tell, then maybe he’s somewhere between dead and alive. That means there’s a chance he’s alive, maybe in the Drowned Lands, maybe … you said there was a place of remembrance in the citadel, Aerin. Does it share any of the drowned city’s aspects? Could there be a stasis hall beneath it?”

“We never found one, playing as children.” Aerin sounded as if the lack of discovery implied it was impossible one should be there.

“It took me to find the way in the drowned city,” Lara reminded her. Aerin shrugged an eyebrow in cranky assent and tension-ridden amusement sparked in Lara. Whether it was her mortality or her magic, the idea that she could find what Aerin couldn’t visibly annoyed the Seelie warrior, and Lara didn’t quite blame her. She was the outsider, usurping far too many things, but momentum had her in its grasp. Dafydd and then Ioan had asked for her help, setting her on this path, but now she wanted the answers for her own sake. Nothing would stop her, though the thought brought a shiver of alarm.

“You cannot imagine I will allow you to seek out my old enemy if there’s a chance he still lives,” Hafgan said in soft astonishment. “To see Ioan, Seelie by birth but Unseelie by choice, take Emyr’s throne would have been triumph enough. But my son by blood and birth has ascended through wit alone, and you think I will let you go?”

“I was your son.” Each word scraped from Ioan’s throat like a wound, his gaze on Hafgan bleak and betrayed.

“And I loved you. But I love my own flesh more. How could I do less, when he’s devised and won such a game? I will embrace him, so he might cast aside the false face he wears and the Seelie people will know we’re united in ruling them.”

“He said four,” Lara said, quiet and mellow in the face of Hafgan’s delight. He scowled and she turned a palm up, explaining, “He said there were four people between himself and sovereignty in the Barrow-lands. Emyr, Ioan, and Dafydd are three. That leaves you, the last king. Do you really think Merrick has any plans to power-share, Hafgan? You gave him up as a child. Why would he want to give you your due as his father?”

Uncertainty, then anger, flashed in Hafgan’s eyes. “If he’s so callow as that, then he can be replaced. Emyr is dead or lost to the Barrow-lands, and I have his heirs here before me. Like Merrick, there is now only one person standing between myself and kingship over all the land.”

Fire gouted up as he spoke, dancing over rubble-coated surfaces and melting the black opalescent stone that made up the Unseelie citadel’s floor. Metal-laden trees buckled, then disintegrated as flame exploded over them. The surface of Ioan’s pool hissed and bubbled, brought to boiling in an instant as the fire rushed Lara’s group. She clenched her mouth shut, appalled at the air’s searing heat. It would take accelerants to make a fire explode so dangerously in her world, but here it took nothing more than the will of an angry man. She moved backward, heat at her back telling her there was already nowhere to go: the center of the Unseelie palace was entirely alight, raging flame consuming all it touched. There wasn’t even the blessing of billowing smoke to grant them a chance at easy passage. Hafgan’s magic burned clean, so greedy it left nothing at all behind.

A true path might save them, if she could find one that led out of the inferno. The staff might save them, if she was willing to pit one unearthly magic against another. Its enthusiasm for the prospect made her grab it harder, uncertain if her grip was meant to quell or encourage. Truthseeking magic, she reminded herself: that was her strength, and that was their chance. The staff would only wreak more havoc, and the image of Boston’s ruins already left a mark in her mind. She would not release that power within the Barrow-lands, not if she could help it. Even if it meant leaving the lands drowned, if she could find no way to control the staff’s devastating magic, she would not again call on its power. Her own would have to be enough. Resolute, she whispered the phrase that had helped her open a true path the first time: “Follow the yellow brick road.”

The familiar bouncing tune cut across the fire’s roar, helping her to focus, though it did nothing at all to alleviate the air’s scalding heat. She coughed on it, trying to draw her next breath through her nostrils, but their moisture was already gone. She had to do more, had to do better, and had to do it quickly. Another breath or two and her lungs would burn trying to draw air that fire already consumed.

Beneath the flame’s noise, at Lara’s side, Ioan whispered, “Oh no, Father,” and water began to fall from a rocky sky.

She had forgotten. Had forgotten the waterfall and river that fed the cavern, if they were even necessary to Ioan’s power. Had forgotten Ioan’s element entirely, anathema to Hafgan’s fire. And, truth be told, had hardly realized the sheer potential of released power, when two such elements were flung against one another in battle.

The first drops hissed to steam so quickly they might not have fallen at all, save for Hafgan’s squall of outrage. The deluge came after that, bucketsful of water pouring down. Steam billowed everywhere, as dangerous in its own way as the fire. Lara screamed, cowering from clouds of superheated water as they rolled toward them. There was no true path opening up to save them: terror stymied her magic thoroughly, and if there was a song to be heard, it was that of elemental destruction. It was wilder than the earth songs she’d heard, full of crackling enthusiasm and the clash of water’s rush against fire’s snap.

Earth song erupted around them, mother-of-pearl flooring shattering upward as the granite beneath rose in a shield that steam couldn’t penetrate. Lara shrieked again, too-hot air still ripping at her lungs, and Aerin, red-faced with heat and concentration, gave her a withering look as more rock shot up, protecting them from the worst of the colliding elemental excesses.

Ioan barked a rough sound of approval and new water formed on the inside curve of their protective wall, dripping down on them to mitigate the heat. Within seconds they were safe—comparatively safe—in a pocket of cooler air. Lara whimpered and smoothed her hand over the condensing water, then rubbed it over her face, more grateful for its presence than she could vocalize. She wanted to lick the wall just to replace a little of the water she’d lost, but urgency pressed at her: Ioan and Hafgan’s battle was only in its infancy, and the city could still trap them. The respite had to be enough. She bent her attention a second time to building a true path, and instead was swept away by the raging song of combat.

Hafgan stood encircled by flame, power and heat blazing off him. Nothing Lara could think of stood against water, not in the long term. Even fire so hot it boiled the bottom of the ocean ultimately conceded its battle, stone cooling and rising under water’s implacable pressure. But that was at home, where magic didn’t hold sway. In the Barrow-lands, it was possible a king’s will and power might defeat even the most relentless element that Lara’s world knew.

Even as she thought it, the strength in Ioan’s calling changed. Its music softened, drawing back, and the heat beneath Aerin’s stone shield intensified again. Dafydd let go a curse, fingers curled uselessly: he might survive throwing lightning into the raging fight between fire and water, but Lara would be electrocuted, and even Aerin, literally grounded, was unlikely to live through the attempt. The fight was Ioan’s alone.

Ioan’s draw of power faded, sending a spasm of despair through Lara. A true path still refused to respond, and with Ioan’s magic faltering they had no more than minutes, perhaps seconds, to live.

Falsehood sang through the thought, and Lara, abruptly, thought of tsunamis.

An instant later a wall of water crashed into the city’s heart.

Fire guttered inside a breath, drowned by the mass of water rolling over it. Shocked relief ricocheted through Lara as the tidal wave rolled harmlessly around them, guided in its entirety by Ioan’s will. Hafgan’s howl crashed through the water. There was no sense, though, of his life being quenched, only the inferno that had eaten at the garden. Within seconds, even that was struggling to rebirth itself, though the stunning amount of water pouring through the city gave fire little purchase. But it only needed a little, when powered by magic instead of conventional fuels.

Lara drew in a breath of wonderfully cool air and knotted her hands around the worldbreaking staff. “Your power, bent to my will,” she whispered to it. “I can open the path out of here, and you can make it solid so we can run on it, or we can burn and drown at the bottom of this cavern. Those are the choices. Take your pick.”

Anticipation stretched from the staff, its semi-sentience searching for the flaws in Lara’s offer. There were none: she’d spoken with a truthseeker’s conviction, certain that they—and the staff; most importantly, in its view, the staff—would lie cracked and lost beneath the boiling inferno if it didn’t choose to bend to her will. It pushed at her resolve, which, a little to her own surprise, held firm: she would rather die there than release the staff’s power into the world un-mentored.

Pure petty resentment flared from the staff, but it acquiesced, and the silly, catchy song sprang into Lara’s mind again: Follow the yellow brick road!

White light, not yellow brick, exploded over the city, pathways parting water as they plunged low, and making brilliant streaks as they shot across the granite sky. Even guided by her desire, the staff had a mind of its own, but it wasn’t reaching for destruction. After an eternity of seconds, one of the pathways crashed into being around them, turning the gloom inside of Aerin’s stone shell to a spotlight-brilliant glare.

All four of them grabbed each other’s arms and scrambled up the escape route they were offered, leaving the conflicted city behind.