Wayfinder (21 page)

Song gurgled as it twisted around, returning to Lara and seeking another path. She said, “Back down the beach, back to where we left the horses,” into Dafydd’s shoulder, and heard a trill of impatience enter the symphony as the riders wheeled and drove their animals back the way they’d come. “Does your lightning have a personality?”

“Short-tempered but easily assuaged,” Dafydd replied without a hint of seeming to think the question strange. “Impatient, impulsive, callous. There’s no softness in it. Why do you ask?”

“Because the truthseeking music is starting to make commentary. And the staff has all along,” Lara added more softly. “It wants to be used. It wants to destroy.”

“Your will is stronger than its.” Determination, if not strict accuracy, filled Dafydd’s voice. “Lara …”

She pushed her nose against his shoulder and said, ruefully, “This still isn’t the time.”

“Perhaps not, but I’ve greeted Aerin more enthusiastically than you, and that was hardly my intention. I feel … rushed. As though I daren’t stop moving, for fear events will overwhelm us. And I barely know what’s happened this past season or more!”

Something popped in Lara’s chest, making breathing easier. “I feel the same way. And you’re forgiven. I got a kiss, and she didn’t.” It was petty, but his acknowledgment in how he’d received Aerin made all the difference.

“You kissed me,” Dafydd said firmly. “A favor I intend to make up for later. Now, Lara … can you tell me what I’ve missed?”

She said, “Turn left where the road forks,” instead, as the pathway behind her eyelids veered that way. For a moment she dared open her eyes, glimpsing the roadway. Texture and color set it apart from the fields alongside it, even in the moon’s scant light. A thrust of bright music lay over the road itself, not illuminating it in any real-world way. The combination made her dizzy. She closed her eyes again, grateful that she rode with Dafydd and had no need to guide the horse herself.

“I don’t know most of what’s happened here,” she said then. She sketched out the details of Dafydd’s rescue by Ioan and Merrick’s reappearance, the latter of which made the Seelie prince’s posture tense so much their horse whickered in agitation. “I followed him back to the Barrow-lands, through his worldwalking spell, but I got thrown out of time again. He’s here somewhere, Dafydd, I’m sure
of it. Hiding in the waters, maybe, although I thought he might come after us while we were in the city and he didn’t. Thank God,” she added with feeling, then exhaled and brought her attention back to the matter at hand. “The farmers who attacked us saw two Seelie warriors, and Ioan’s no longer fair.”

“Can you seek him the way we seek Ioan now?” Dafydd relaxed a little, though there was still strain in his body.

Lara shook her head. “Maybe once we stop moving. I’d need to concentrate more than I can when we’re jolting.”

“Jolting?” Dafydd sounded offended and Lara laughed.

“I’m not used to horses, Dafydd. Right, turn right up ahead. We’re almost there.” The streaking light in her mind was resolving, becoming a steady bright point. “Can you see a town?”

“Village lights. There’ve been one or two others along the way. You’re certain this is the right one?” The question was more impressed than suspicious; Dafydd had never doubted her, not since he’d recognized her gift.

Lara pressed a smile into his shoulder, then peeked over it to catch a glimpse of torches glowing in the near distance. “If it’s not, my power has gone horribly awry. That looks like real fire.”

“It is,” Aerin called. Lara startled, having not realized the Seelie woman could hear them over the horses’ hooves. Aerin dropped her horse into a walk to make conversation easier as she nodded toward the village. “Our light spheres are easy to maintain, but they’re a constant slow draw on magics. They must use fire for most light in this valley, or one of us would have discovered them long since.”

“You hunt down magic use? You can do that?” Whether they
should
was another topic entirely, one Lara wasn’t prepared to broach.

Aerin shrugged. “Not as a matter of course, but it can be done. It’s why we hide our citadels behind glamours, to make them less vulnerable. So if there had been a long constant draw of power here,
in a valley near the Drowned Hundred … yes. Someone would have investigated, and Emyr would have—”

“Taken action,” Lara volunteered as a shiver spread over her skin. Emyr was not a nice man. Neither had Hafgan been nice, and it was easy enough to see how two leaders of such arrogance could drag their people down paths of unthinking cruelty. Ioan at least seemed less dedicated to the concept of his own superiority, and Dafydd was entirely diffident by comparison to his father. Maybe it was their relative youth, but it seemed to Lara the Barrow-lands would be better governed by the sons than the fathers.

“Yes.” Aerin sounded pleased by the phrase
taken action
, and Lara cast a helpless glance toward the heavens before leaning around Dafydd to better see the nearing village.

Not only the torches danced in her vision. Even with the truthseeker’s path guiding her, the whole of the little town flickered in and out of her sight like Brigadoon. Heat banded her skull, warning of an oncoming headache. “I hate glamours.”

Dafydd blinked over his shoulder at her and Lara made a face. “They give me migraines. I think the town is glamoured. Probably makes it harder for murderous Seelie to stumble across it.”

Injury entered Dafydd’s eyes and Lara pulled another face. “Sorry. That wasn’t fair.”

“I should think it was.” A woman’s voice came out of the darkness ahead of them and both Seelie reined up as the voice was followed by shadows releasing a familiar face: Braith, still bearing the scythe she’d threatened Ioan with earlier. Her red hair was almost black in the scant moonlight, and she looked older, grimmer, than she had by day. “That’s exactly why the town is glamoured. It’s one of our few means of defense, Truthseeker. We will not change that for your comfort.”

“No.” Lara pinched the bridge of her nose, ineffectively willing
her headache to retreat. “I wouldn’t expect you to. But may we enter the village? It might be less distressing from the inside.”

“Who is your companion?” Braith obviously meant Dafydd; Aerin, she recognized and disdained with a single glance.

“Dafydd ap Caerwyn,” he said, unwisely in Lara’s opinion. In Aerin’s, too: she stiffened and moved her horse a step closer, for all that she no longer had either armor or weapon.

Braith’s grip on the scythe became more aggressive. “Emyr’s second-born.”

“The same. I bear you no ill will, and put myself in your power for the duration of our visit.”

A hostage to good behavior, in other words, though doubt spiked through Lara. The Unseelie in this valley had no reason at all to keep their enemy’s son alive, not when a degree of vengeance could be enacted with no one the wiser. She and Aerin stood as the only two witnesses, and aside from the staff, were unarmed. It would be the work of moments to rid the world of all three of them.

The staff rumbled anticipation through her. Whether it was for her potential demise or the possibility of battle, Lara neither knew nor cared. She slipped down from the horse to face Braith. “He means it. The truth is, he’d probably stay here forever just to keep things more settled between your two people, but that won’t accomplish any of the things you and I both want. Emyr would never accept Dafydd being left here, and I can’t learn what happened to Annwn without Emyr’s help.” Or without finding Hafgan again, but that was more than Braith needed to know, even if the lie of omission rang warning bells in Lara’s mind. “We’re running out of time, Braith. I need you to decide now if you’ll help us or not.”

Braith’s gaze slipped from Lara to the two mounted Seelie behind her. Lara checked the impulse to turn and investigate them herself, feeling that doing so would undermine her own authority. Authority she’d taken on herself and, for that reason most particularly, couldn’t
afford to erode. Aerin had seen her take up that mantle earlier and was likely to heed it, but Dafydd, a prince in his own right, might well choose to act outside the boundaries Lara outlined.

But he said nothing, and Braith, studying him, evidently saw no threat or disregard for Lara’s demands. After a long while she nodded, attention back on Lara. “All right. I’ll bring you to the healers.”

Even within the village borders, Lara’s vision flickered and danced uncomfortably. She accepted Dafydd’s hand up to horseback again, more comfortable riding with her eyes closed than struggling against the glamour that winked small houses and streets in and out of visibility. Neither of the citadels had affected her so badly, but neither of the citadels, she imagined, had such cause to hide. Truth jangled through that thought, wearying even in itself.

What glimpses she got when she dared peek through tangled lashes were of a comfortable little township, homes close together with fields surrounding them. The streets were cobbled, instead of the hard-packed earth that made up the roadways they’d followed through the valley. Their horses clopped over the changed texture with no concern, their footing as sure as ever. Lara, headache throbbing with every hoofbeat, wondered if anything at all disturbed the pace of beasts capable of traversing a half-dozen steps with each stride.

More than a few curious people looked out of windows or came out of doors to watch the little processional. Curious and often bitter, though Lara had the sense that it was the elders whose countenances bore the latter emotion. Others looked as though they’d never seen anything like Lara and the two Seelie, and whether their gazes lingered longest on her, or on their eternal enemies, she couldn’t say. They weren’t friendly, though. Hostility and caution burned in their stances, and after a minute or two Lara was happier to close her eyes against their stares, and ride unrecognizing of silent assault.

“The healer’s hall.” Braith spoke with portence, though the hall, when Lara opened her eyes, looked very much like the other small tidy homes she’d caught sight of. Neither it nor its immediate surrounds bobbed and weaved the way most of the village did, though the torches hung outside its door developed auras, sign of a worsening headache. Still, the stability of the house itself was gratifying, and Lara trusted her feet as she slid off the horse to the ground.

Dafydd put an arm around her waist a moment later, his voice low with concern. “Are you well?”

“Not really.” Lara managed a wan smile that turned to an actual quiet laugh at Dafydd’s dismay. “I’ll manage. These magic-induced migraines seem to go as fast as they come. I’ll be okay once we’re out of here.”

He nodded and released her as they fell in behind Braith, who tapped twice on the hall’s wooden door, then opened the door, gesturing Lara’s party to follow her.

It
was
a hall, or at least a long single room warmed by a small hearth-bound fire. An apothecary’s table, littered with pestles and vials, sat fully on the other side of the room, directly across from the fire. Empty basins littered with drying rags stood at the far end, and half a dozen fur-covered beds, all with backless chairs beside them, were distributed down the room’s length. Only one was occupied.
Ioan sat on its edge rather than ensconced under covers. He glanced up and came to his feet in one motion. “Lara. You made it. You—
Dafydd.
”

The second name was laden with complicated emotion. Regret, Lara thought: regret and relief and surprise. Ioan swayed where he stood, watching Dafydd down the length of the room until Lara felt as if she should retreat, leaving the brothers to their first meeting for the first time in more years than she could name. “You look well,” Ioan finally scraped out, and Dafydd gave a short hard laugh.

“I’m not sure I can say the same about you. You look … different. Lara told me what you’d done, but …”

But it was no doubt too little preparation for seeing a brother, once a near mirror image, changed into someone else entirely. It would be possible to do at home, Lara thought, with hair and skin dye, and with careful weight management, though Ioan ap Annwn was actually shorter than he’d once been, height transformed to Unseelie breadth. On Earth, that would be impossible, an illusion if managed at all. Here it was all truth, willpower manifesting over physicality in ways only magic could explain.

Ioan clenched his fists, gaze dropping before he forced it up again. “It’s easier for me,” he said after a moment. “The Seelie court changes less than I have. You are … much as I remember you. And Lara has succeeded. In all things?”

The question intimated something none of them wanted to say in front of Braith: that Ioan was not Hafgan, though he was king of the Unseelie people. Unexpectedly, Dafydd looked to Lara for a response. Her eyebrows crawled upward and she narrowly avoided passing the question on to Aerin. Braith’s silent presence stopped her: Lara was the nominal leader of their little group, and answers should fall to her. “In all things. I can tell you more later, but if you’re well enough, we need you to scry Emyr immediately. There were … complications, and Aerin wasn’t able to report to him
tonight. I’m concerned about the ramifications, if he thinks she’s injured or dead.”