Wayfinder

she resumed again her voice was softer. “I recall the queen watching over us, and how she loved the waters.”

“Rhiannon.” Lara finished the name Aerin had not, and this time Emyr’s hiss was directed at her. She shook it off, more curious about the Seelie queen than concerned about the king’s anger. “Oisín mentioned her once. Even Dafydd barely remembers her. What … what happened to her?”

“She died,” Aerin said when it became obvious Emyr would not speak. “Saving Merrick, in truth. He swam out too far. The queen went into the water before anyone realized something was wrong. Merrick returned, but our lady …”

Lara put her fingers over her mouth, comprehension lurching through her. Ioan, so far as she could tell, had been embraced by the Unseelie king Hafgan, while Emyr had never warmed to his own adopted child Merrick. Now she understood why, and for the first time felt real sympathy for the Seelie monarch. It wouldn’t be easy for even a charitable man to forgive a child for costing a wife’s life, and nothing about Emyr had ever suggested he was of a lenient mind.

“Put her on a horse.” Emyr’s harsh voice cut across any thought of condolences Lara might have offered. “Put her on a horse, Aerin, and stick her there. We ride for my traitorous son’s head.”

Four

Stick her there was a literal explanation of the magic used to keep Lara on her horse. She wasn’t uncoordinated, but her exposure to horses was limited. Rather than permit her to slow the Seelie riders down, she had twice now been be-spelled so that she simply couldn’t fall off her horse. She could climb down, slowly and carefully, but that wasn’t something she wanted to try at full gallop, in spite of her reservations about their task. And it would have been far worse to be left behind. At Emyr’s side she had a chance to mitigate his decisions, though the odds of the Seelie king listening to her were slim.

They rode now at the head of a host, Aerin and a dozen other guards behind them. Lara’s place just to Emyr’s left wasn’t a position of honor so much as a location from which she could be easily watched. Guards rode behind them to ensure she wouldn’t peel off and ride breakneck across the countryside alone.

Not that she would: the only two places in the Barrow-lands she knew at all were the Seelie citadel and the Unseelie palace. The one was hardly a refuge when Emyr was infuriated with her, and the other would be her destination regardless. It was the only chance she had at learning Dafydd’s fate. Whatever Emyr’s intentions, Lara’s own were to find the amber-eyed Seelie prince. The hope of seeing him again—of seeing him healthy and fit—urged her forward even if nothing else did.

Forest surged by, the horses crossing unnatural lengths with each step as they left Emyr’s war far behind. In very little time, even the forest was gone and the land sloped up toward rough mountains. In the distance a sheer rock face rose as though it had been thrust out of the earth so recently that erosion hadn’t yet thought to touch it. From what she’d learned of Barrow-lands history, it seemed possible that it had in fact erupted in living memory.

The thought was a true one, filled with deep bassoon notes, as if the sound of tearing stone had been transmuted into music. That would have been enough, but the staff, which lay strapped across her back now, sang an answer as much as her truthseeking sense did. If one part of the Barrow-lands had drowned, another area had risen. The bleak gray wall ahead of them was part and parcel of that, and the staff exuded smugness over the fact. Lara bent her head over the horse’s mane, discomfort crawling along her spine. Ioan hadn’t intimated that the staff had personality, but she had no other word for the barrage of feelings.

The thought twinged discordance and she amended it. She had another word: sentience. But that was too alien to be fully considered. Oisín, who had carried it for years, might be able to explain the weapon’s evident character, but the poet wasn’t among the riders approaching the Unseelie court.

Emyr’s curse barked across her thoughts, and her horse obeyed the command that the other riders gave their animals: it slowed, prancing to the edge of a plummeting canyon. The soaring escarpment lay on the canyon’s far side, emphasizing again the impression that granite had simply been torn asunder, a ravine ripped open so the rock face could be permitted to shoot skyward. On the far wall a narrow, plunging ledge jutted down sheer rock face, its foot lost in darkness. Sparks of pain flew through Lara’s skull as she stared at it.

“The crevasse looks as though it narrows to the right,” Aerin called. “Perhaps there’s a crossing point. Shall I ride to see?”

Below Emyr’s grudging agreement, Lara asked, “Haven’t you ever been to the Unseelie palace?” Her vision pounded, bolts of searing light breaking through the image of what she saw and what she knew was there. She had always had a susceptibility to migraines, but only in the past few weeks had their auras been triggered by deceiving magic.

Emyr growled. “What reason would I have to visit my enemy’s stronghold?”

“To see your son?” Lara suggested, and only too late wished the words away. Emyr’s lip curled, but she raised a hand, barely aware she was silencing a king. “The forest path to the Seelie citadel is glamoured. It can’t be seen until you’re on it, so the horses have to know the way.”

“What of it?”

Lara caught her horse’s reins up. It whickered in surprise, as she’d done nothing to suggest guiding it before, but it went willingly enough when she turned it away from the precipice and rode back through the gathered guards.

“Clear a path.” She would never have imagined herself giving calm commands, nor for a dozen riders to make way as if she had every right to give orders. Only Emyr hesitated, and then, irritated, he, too, pulled back from the cliff’s edge.

It was easier to see from a distance. The air didn’t twist as badly. Lara’s headache faded, allowing her to look through the disguise that had been laid upon the entrance to Unseelie territory.

The rift in the earth was unquestionably still there. But across from them was not flat rock face, but rather a black maw gouged into the cliff. She had ridden it before: she knew, despite what her eyes wanted to see, that the cavern hid a tongue of stone broad and solid enough for a horse to leap to, and that the plummeting pathway visible along the flat wall in truth led straight down into the canyon’s depths. It was a far more difficult illusion than the one laid to hide the Seelie citadel. That one had merely surprised her, while this wrenched at her vision and had nearly cost her the contents of her stomach when she’d first ridden it. Even now, knowing its truth, it was nearly impossible to see through, though the longer she frowned at it, the clearer it became.

Its trick was in flattening the real landscape, so that the eye saw a nearly endless edifice rising behind an equally lengthy ravine. In fact, the stone rising up before them was cut into a nearly perfect squared corner, with great lengths of granite running at close to ninety degrees. One shot off to Lara’s right, where Aerin rode to explore the slight narrowing of the crevasse. The other was almost straight ahead. It was down that angle that the pathway ran, still plunging as deep into the chasm as it did in the illusion. Lara blinked once and the entire glamour smoothed back into a single plane, still fighting the truth she believed in. Dafydd’s glamour hadn’t been so persistent. Once she’d seen through it to recognize his elfin features, it hadn’t worked on her again. Whomever had cast the spell into these great stone walls had poured tremendous magic into the job. Lara wondered suddenly if the maker had survived his efforts.

And now, very likely against wit and wisdom, she was going to lead the single man whom they had probably most wanted to keep out of the hidden city into it. Lara patted her horse’s shoulder and tried not to feel foolish at murmuring “Trust me” to the beast.

It snorted agreeably, and in the instant she drove her heels into its flanks, Lara wondered if it was trust, or if the magic-riddled horses could see through the glamour. It hardly mattered: it sprang forward in a run and leapt fearlessly into the chasm. Lara’s stomach dropped and she had an instant to be grateful for the spell that kept her stuck to the saddle.

A heartbeat later they landed in a clatter of hooves against the broad cave tongue, glamour giving up and no longer trying to fool Lara’s eye. The horse pitched down the incline leading to the Unseelie city. Behind her, Lara heard Emyr’s shout of astonishment and preparations for his host to follow. Only a few seconds passed before the