drowning. The staff, safe across her back, pulsed with power, and for a moment she wanted to draw it out to help her stand. But it had tried to split the earth back on the shores of the Drowned Lands. What it would do within their actual borders wasn’t something she was eager to discover. Instead she sat back on her heels, uncertain of when she’d fallen. Aerin grabbed her elbow and pulled her to her feet, less elegant than the staff’s support might have been, but equally effective.
Glenna stood before them, paler than before. Wan, fading, with a different desperation in her eyes. Lara croaked, “Rest,” and put a hand over her throat; she sounded as if she hadn’t spoken in weeks. Exhaustion swept over her, limbs trembling and thirst coming on her hard. She spoke slowly, making sure the words made sense: “Rest. I understand now, and I won’t forget. You won’t be forgotten.”
Aerin hissed, “What are you speaking of?” but Lara shook her head as Glenna stepped back and began to fade.
They weren’t ghosts. They were the memory of the land. Someone—Llyr, perhaps, if he was god of the sea and the things in it—had invested, or lost, so much in the drowned countryside that it survived in the water itself; in the inundated earth, and in the shards of homes and buildings and bones now hidden beneath the water.
“Oisín will help me write it down,” Lara whispered to the changing land. The black earth was emptier now, not just of the visible ghosts, but even a sense of sorrow was lessened. “All your stories. All your names. You’ve waited long enough. Rest now. Go with …”
“Rhiannon,” Aerin said in a very low voice.
Lara looked at her, then at the darkening land and finally nodded. “With Rhiannon. With Llyr. Go into history, but not legend. You won’t be forgotten. I promise.”
Glenna lingered the longest, and when she was gone, so was the sun. Stars in a multitude of colors thickened the sky. Lara, staring upward, entertained the idea that the drowned Unseelie had just passed into starlight, and from Aerin’s discomfited expression, thought the Seelie woman imagined the same. Song wrapped around the fancy, exploring it without finding absolute truth or falsehood in it. Lara smiled and sat down in the dirt, weary but satisfied.
Aerin’s acerbic voice took her good humor away: “We’ve stood here on this farmstead half a day and you’re smiling?”
“Half …” The stars slipped into place in a more meaningful manner. Lara gaped at them, then at Aerin. “I was out half a day?”
The Seelie woman gestured impatiently at the horizon, which didn’t so much as hint at sunset. “Emyr scried me these long hours ago, while you shivered and cried out and whispered stories of the dead. He was none too pleased, Truthseeker.”
“You didn’t tell him Ioan was injured, did you?”
Shiftiness crossed Aerin’s face. Lara groaned, then leveled a finger at the other woman. “If we get back and Emyr’s obliterated the Unseelie city, I’m holding you responsible.”
Alarm replaced Aerin’s evasiveness and Lara bit back rue. There had been some truth in her threat, enough to not sour it in her mind, but she had briefly forgotten the power her gift offered.
Then again, Aerin had every reason to want Dafydd back, if nothing else. Want him back not just for the Barrow-lands, but perhaps for Aerin herself. From her perspective, it had been only a few days—months, now— since he’d left the Seelie court to find a truthseeker. She knew it had been decades for Dafydd—Lara had been there when he’d told her—but what she likely saw was her lover returning after a mere handful of days with a new, mortal interest on his arm.
Lara muttered, “Relationships are hard enough without time travel.”
Aerin said, “What?” sharply, and Lara shook her head.
“Nothing. Nothing important, Aerin. Sorry. Look, I know we only have two days left and three trials to find and survive, but I’m so tired I’m shivering. I don’t think we’re going to be bothered again right here. Could we sleep until sunrise?”
“You may,” Aerin said grudgingly. “I’ll stand watch.”
“Try not to kill anybody, okay?” Lara crawled to their packs and unrolled a blanket, folding it beneath herself to gain more protection from the cool earth before tugging a second one over her. From beneath the sudden warmth, she mumbled “Thank you,” and in moments sleep brought dreams of elfin faces and names and stories that would never leave her.
Ten
“Do you have a plan?” Aerin’s question, only slightly less welcome than the encroaching sunrise, shook off any hope Lara had of stealing another few minutes’ sleep. The most she could do was refuse to move, buried in her blankets, while she struggled to turn half-sleeping thoughts into coherent words.
“We’ll go into the ruined city,” she finally answered. “So many people died there. Seems like a good place to hold rites of passage. I wonder if we both have to pass. Should’ve asked Ioan.”
“The quest is yours, Truthseeker. It’s the hero, not his companions, who has to prove himself.”
Lara pushed up on an elbow, throwing blankets back so she could glower blearily at Aerin. “Are the Seelie completely unfamiliar with the concept of reassurance?”
“No, but you would hear the falsehood in my voice.”
Lara groaned. “I never thought I’d miss the little white lies people tell each other. All right.” She climbed out of bed, shaking dirt from the blankets and rolling them up again as tightly as she could. Aerin watched with professional disinterest, only nodding when Lara’s attempts to repack met her approval. A brief glow of delight warmed Lara. She wasn’t an outdoorsy camping type like Kelly, so successfully packing gear was an accomplishment worth taking pride in. It was the little things, Kelly often said, and Lara found herself in agreement.
Aerin tossed her a chunk of dried meat, followed by a piece of even drier bread, then swung her own pack up onto her shoulders with well-practiced ease. Lara watched, eyebrows furrowed as Aerin checked the pack’s hang and shifted a canteen of water to her hip for easy access. “The city’s half a day’s walk if we’re quick.”
“I doubt I’m quick.” Lara eyed Aerin’s longer legs, then crouched to pull her own pack on and copy the placement of a water canteen. “Too bad we couldn’t bring the horses.”
“We might have ridden through the ghost fields undisturbed yesterday afternoon, had we had the horses.” Aerin’s tone suggested it was entirely Lara’s fault they’d been deprived. She set out with long strides, quick enough that irritation spurted through Lara. She could match Aerin’s pace for a little while, but would end up exhausted and slowing them down that much more if she responded to the Seelie woman’s machismo. It took active determination to not run and catch up, but Lara settled into a pace she could maintain, gnawing on salty meat and chalky bread. Food that would last forever, probably, though she wouldn’t want to live forever if it was all she got to eat.
The earth underfoot was unfamiliar: clots of dirt and poking stones rather than the smooth paved streets she was accustomed to at home. It smelled better, though, fresh and warming with the sunrise, without patches of gum and worse to navigate. The backpack, this early on, wasn’t onerous, though a few hours of carrying its bulk would exhaust her shoulders. It would take as little time for her calves and feet to become weary from walking on soft, shiftable ground, but as long as she didn’t give in to Aerin’s silent challenge, she would be fine.
Within an hour Aerin slowed to an amble, waiting for Lara to catch her, and then matching Lara’s gait. “You’re smarter than I thought.”
Lara laughed out loud. “That’s what we’d call damning with faint praise, Aerin. You’re half a foot taller than I am. I couldn’t keep up even if you weren’t trying to make me look bad. Your shoulder’s not bothering you,” she added awkwardly.
Tension thinned Aerin’s mouth. “Not since the drowning. I inspected it while you … communed … with the dead. It appears to be healed.”
