Wayfinder

Six

“Abandon your people in the midst of war?” Emyr sounded pleased by the idea.

Ioan widened his eyes in flawless innocence. “The truthseeker has proposed amnesty, Father. Will you not lay down your sword for the little time it takes us to journey to the Drowned Lands and back?”

“Little time? It could be months. Years!”

“Which is negligible to immortals,” Lara said. “Maybe you could stay here to ensure the Seelie court’s good behavior.”

Emyr looked down his nose at her, disdain no less effective for the water still dripping off him. “I am a king, Truthseeker.”

“Which should make you an effective bargaining tool. More effective than your firstborn sons turned out to be. Speaking of which, have you seen Merrick, Ioan?”

Astonishment lengthened Ioan’s jaw. “Merrick is dead.”

Lara crushed her eyes shut, trying to remember who she had shared what information with. For a moment she wished she was at home, gossiping with her friend Kelly Richards, if for no other reason than her certainty that Kelly had been told everything. “No, he isn’t. Merrick was the mastermind of his own demise. He framed Dafydd. A power play.” She shrugged, eyes open again, and sympathy splashed through her as she saw Ioan struggle to fit the news against what he thought he’d known. “He controlled the nightwing hydra you fought in my world,” Lara added. “I caught up with him a few hours later, and you’d hit him pretty hard. I thought he might have come looking for payback.”

“That was—” Ioan broke off, held his breath, then, more steadily, began again. “That was months ago. I hadn’t spared a thought for the … hydra … or you, in some time, Lara.”

“It was this morning, in my timeline. So where’s he been all this time? Hiding? Recovering?”

“Dead,” Emyr said, and shrugged arrogantly as she looked at him. “All we have is your word that he lives at all.”

Ioan, to Lara’s gratitude, spluttered, “A truthseeker’s word is incontrovertible! How can you—”

“Even a truthseeker can be misled, especially if young in years and power. More likely by far his resurrection is a conspired tale between the two of you to draw me here so you might execute me.” Badly tuned string instruments sang through Emyr’s theory, proof that even he didn’t believe what he suggested.

Lara gestured toward the pool. “Use it to scry for him. Prove me wrong.”

Pique thinned Emyr’s lips, and Lara fought down a triumphant smile. Ioan, though, took a few quick strides back to the pool’s edge and knelt by it. The unbroken surface shimmered, then deepened, water turning stormy gray. “If I can find him we may have more than one task to complete, Truthseeker. Hafgan and Dafydd’s return, yes, but hunting down our cousin may be more important still.”

Emyr made a sound of angry disbelief. “That spell works in ice alone!”

“What is ice,” Ioan murmured, “but frozen water? The scrying spell has long since been mine to command, Father. You might have considered that, in the years we were apart. We might have been closer, had you ever thought to answer my seekings.” He dismissed the comment with a wave of his fingers, though Emyr went briefly still, staring at the man his son had become. Ioan, as if ignorant of the hard look, brought his full attention back to the pool.

It showed nothing more than relentless gray whirls and white-caps, a chaotic ocean reflected in contained waters. Lara edged forward, trying to find a pattern in the breaking waves. “I thought the scrying spell could find someone anywhere.” Rather like a cell phone, putting people in touch at the farthest points on the globe.

“Almost anywhere. If he’s within Annwn, certainly, but if he’s returned to your world …”

Very much like a cell phone, then, reliant on the coverage available. Lara flashed a smile, somehow reassured that magic and technology had similar limits, though her humor faded as Emyr slid her a triumphant look. “Your protestations of his survival lack teeth, Truthseeker.”

Lara mumbled, “Lara. My name is Lara,” though she doubted Emyr would deign to use it. The title objectified her, and it was always easier to ignore an object than a person. “I’m not going to argue about it, Emyr. Either he’s dead like you’re pretending to believe, or he’s hiding in my world. Either way, he’s a problem we don’t have to deal with right now. Will you call a cease-fire?”

A thrum of determination went through her as she asked. She was almost certain she could enforce a reprieve by using the staff, but it was a solution she shied away from. Like escaping the Unseelie city, the first methods that came to mind were violent: splitting the earth between the two armies, for example, so that few, if any, could cross over and make war on the other. They weren’t options she wanted to explore, regardless of the ease with which she suspected they could be done.

Once again, an image of herself as she’d been only a few weeks ago—quiet, shy, always ready to remain in the background—rose up in contrast to what she’d become. The very idea of wielding significant power, secular or magical, to get her point across would have been inconceivable. Now it was a matter for debate, even if she was determined those debates remain internal.

Caution crept into Emyr’s cool gaze as he studied her, and Lara wondered what subtle change had come over her face to prompt discretion in the Seelie king. “Three days,” he finally said. Beyond him, Aerin’s head came up, surprise clear in the action. “Three days from dawn my army will strike again, and strike hard. If they find themselves battling an enemy whose leader has abandoned them, so much the better for us. If you can affect change, Truthseeker, best do so quickly.” Emyr raised a hand and his horse, still soaked from its prance in the pool, came to him. He swung up onto it with consummate grace and rode for the garden entrance, guards scattering to make way.

He stopped at Aerin’s side, looking down at her. “Join them. I will scry you nightly to learn what comes of this adventure. Should you not return, our vengeance will be in your name.”

Aerin paled but nodded, and whispered something in the elfin high tongue, so quiet that even Lara’s gathering talent couldn’t decipher it. Emyr softened briefly and he put a gauntleted hand on Aerin’s hair, then rode past her, his guards falling into place behind him.

Not until the hoofbeats had faded did anyone speak. Ioan said, “Well,” with pleasure, and Lara, at the same moment, asked, “Why did he do that? He can’t want me to succeed.”

“You could not see your own face, Truthseeker,” Aerin replied. “Emyr remembers when your kind were our justice. I think you may have reminded him of that time, and reminded him of powers even he doesn’t want to cross.”

“What? I thought he was the law. I thought there’d never been more than a few truthseekers anyway. What?” Lara bit down on further repetitions, feeling like an actor dropped into a play she didn’t know the lines to.

“It only took a few,” Aerin said. “And Emyr’s word has been law as long as I can remember. But once upon a time—”

“Oh, no. That’s how fairy tales start.” Lara turned back to her horse, burying her face in the solidity of its shoulder. “I don’t like fairy tales.”

“They seem to have a fondness for you,” Ioan murmured. “Aerin is right, Lara. Yours was not an expression to interfere with. Even I would have shied from it, and you and I aren’t at such cross-purposes as you are with my father.”

Lara gave him a sharp look. “Don’t be sure of that. At least he didn’t kidnap me.”

“Can we not let that be bygones?”

“No, we can’t. I’m not doing any of this for you, Ioan. I’m doing it for Dafydd. If I have to uproot your entire world to get him back, I will. That might end up being to your advantage, but this is not about you.” Lara spoke with ferocity, as if doing so could quell the worry that rose in her every time she thought of Dafydd.

“I envy him,” Ioan said after a moment, “to be capable of inspiring such loyalty on so brief an acquaintance. Be that as it may,” he added, “Aerin is right about another thing. Our ancient histories and legends suggest truthseekers were once the law in these lands, and, not even royal blood was above them.”

“What happened?”

Aerin shrugged. “Rhiannon died.”

“She was one person!”

“She was the queen of Annwn.” Ioan’s simple phrase rang deep bells through Lara, making vibrations that bounced against each other and resonated out again. Lara shuddered, overwhelming emotion rising up to sting at her eyes and send cold bumps scattering across her arms. She cleared her throat, then did so again before gathering enough voice to speak.

“Why is that so important? That was the most … true thing … that I’ve heard here. One of the most true things I’ve ever heard. It felt like—” She broke off, lips pressed together as Ioan and Aerin gave her curious looks. “It felt the same way pure faith does in my world. Like you’d just said ‘God is the king of Heaven.’ It’s so true that saying it is almost silly. Like …” She faltered, but the two elfin folk, fair and dark, were both smiling with wry comprehension.

“Rhiannon was our goddess, Lara. Queen of Annwn, heart of the land. Annwn was born of her, and without her cannot help but be a shadow of what it was. Emyr and Hafgan both loved her, it’s said, and she danced between them as her mood took her. They were jealous of each other, and of her mortal lovers, but when she died they were devastated. That story,” Ioan concluded softly, “is so beloved to our peoples that not even time has worn away its telling.”

“But how can you kill God? Or a goddess, how can you—?”

“Your god, I think, doesn’t walk the earth,” Aerin said, as quietly as Ioan had spoken. “Ours was one of us, the first of us, the womb and magic and vision from which we and this land were born. And for all the endless years of our lives, we can die by accident or violence, and so could she. We’re not like you, Lara.”

“That’s not a god,” Lara protested. “That’s—I mean, my God doesn’t walk the earth, no, or not mostly, but He’s eternal, and humans are mortal. You keep reminding me of that.” She sent a sour look after Emyr, though he was long gone.

“Mortal flesh,” Ioan said, “but immortal souls. You go on forever, in a way we do not.”

Hushed truth ran through his words, more like water over stone than the symphonic song Lara was accustomed to. She finally said, “That’s awful,” feeling it entirely inadequate, but Ioan laughed.

“Perhaps, but then, we would consider your brief span of physical years in exchange for an eternity of disembodiment terrible, too. We follow different paths, Truthseeker, and different fates await us.”

“But not for the next few days,” Aerin concluded pragmatically. “Until we return from the Drowned Lands, our fates are most certainly bound together, and most particularly bound to …” She trailed off, frowning at Ioan.

“We were children together,” he said after a moment. “For a little while, anyway. It may as well be Ioan, especially as I think the royal title would sit poorly on your tongue.”

“Hafgan is king of the Unseelie,” Aerin said, though without conviction.

“Which is why I took his name when he went to the Drowned Lands. The continuity was more important to my people than my name was to me.”

“The continuity was more important to my king,” Aerin corrected. “Had he known of Hafgan’s abdication—”

Ioan’s eyebrows rose fractionally, a hint of humor coming into his response. “He would have invaded. Hence its importance to my people.”

Aerin thinned her mouth, clearly exasperated at the shaving of details, but she let it go to continue what she’d been saying. “We will be greatly in your power, which I acknowledge so that you’re aware I understand our debt and danger. Do not abuse it, teyrnfradwr.”

The word echoed in Lara’s mind, rendering meaning though she was certain she hadn’t genuinely understood it. Traitor, or something close, full of bitter connotations. Ioan pursed his lips and glanced away, then met Aerin’s gaze without guilt. “I mean you no harm, nor will any come to you through any inaction of my own. I believe all of Annwn needs Lara’s help, Aerin. This is not done for myself alone, or even for the Unseelie people at the expense of the Seelie. It would be counter to my own purposes to lead you into harm’s way.”

Lara exhaled. “What’s the problem, Aerin? He’s telling the truth, but even if he wasn’t, I’ve seen you fight. I’m the weak link here, not Ioan.”

“You don’t understand.” Aerin turned a look of condescending pity on Lara. “The Drowned Lands hunger for Seelie lives. Without Ioan’s presence, we will most certainly die.”