Wayfinder

been thinking about this for the last several hours, and I believe it’s the surest way to succeed.”

A heartbeat after Lara realized what he intended, Ioan laid hands on the worldbreaking staff.

Twenty-eight

Power roared from the staff, flaring through Ioan so brightly that, for an instant, Lara saw him as he’d been: a pale creature like Aerin and Dafydd, hair whitened by the magic coursing through him. It shot upward, ripping at the ceiling with a mind for destruction, and Lara could feel the weapon’s unmitigated triumph at such an opportunity for release. The floor beneath them cracked, sending everyone but Ioan into a stagger: he was elevated just above the floor’s surface, the staff’s power wrapping him in a bubble of its own.

Wind and magic shrieked together, creating a song that whipped notes away too quickly for Lara to comprehend. Pictures flew off Kelly’s walls and couch cushions rose up to be shredded. Within seconds the weightiest pieces of furniture were sliding, called by gravity toward the downward-slanting cracks in the floor and hurried along by howling wind. Dickon caught Kelly in his arms, but not even a man his size would stand long against the magic Ioan had set free.

“I can harness it!” Ioan bellowed over Kelly’s screams, confidence and belief in his voice. A handful of weeks earlier, that would have been enough to make Lara believe he spoke the truth.

No longer. Now a greater truth crashed through her mind, drowning out Ioan’s certainty with conviction of its own. The staff’s power would overwhelm Ioan’s, subsume him to its own ends as it had tried repeatedly to do with Lara. Her own magic, she suspected, was different enough—mortal enough—to make it harder for the staff’s uncanny will to grasp and use it fully.

But Ioan, like the weapon, was born of Annwn, and all the more vulnerable for it.

For an instant her thoughts slipped sideways, leaping into conjecture: if Emyr or Hafgan had created the staff, built it out of the living land, then perhaps they, like Ioan, had underestimated what they were doing. It was just possible that the drowning of the land had been unintentional.

Music worsened, rejecting the hypothesis, and Lara had no more time to shake free ideas of what that rejection meant. She flung herself toward Ioan, clawing at the sliding couch and armchairs to give herself purchase against the shrill wind.

Abruptly, Aerin was beside her, standing easily, as if the wind that lashed and snapped at her short hair was nothing more than a mild breeze. She offered a hand and Lara grasped it, then gasped in astonishment as the shifting floor beneath her stabilized. A deep familiar song touched her, slow notes of the earth itself undisturbed as of yet by the magic Ioan had awakened but could not contain. Lara whispered, “Thank you,” knowing the words would go unheard in the clamor made by magic.

Aerin nodded regardless, then leaned close to shout, “Can I stop him this way?” into Lara’s ear.

“No!” It seemed like explanation should follow, but the effort necessary to be heard was daunting. Aerin, unconcerned, only nodded and let Lara go again, though the earthbound magic that gave her sure footing remained in place. The Seelie woman was full of contradictions, willing or unwilling to help on what seemed to be whim.

There would be time to wonder about Aerin’s motivations later. Lara, teeth set together, ran forward as the floor collapsed into concrete rubble and rebar beneath her feet. Song surged, one part delight from the staff, one part a distrustful awakening from the earth below. “Aerin, soothe it!”

She caught a glimpse of Aerin dropping to her hands and knees, head lowered in concentration as she bent her magics toward a world only half willing to recognize her. Far below, the ground groaned with reluctance, then shuddered, sending a ripple through the building. Through the whole block, Lara feared, though the shake threw her over disintegrating floors and let her crash full-bodied into Ioan.

Panic made his youthful face age. “The spell isn’t set! You can’t take it from me!”

“You’re going to destroy Boston!” Lara knotted her hands around the staff and felt its power lurch, suddenly torn between two users. Not masters: she could master it, if necessary; Ioan could only use it. The difference came clear in her mind with the sound of chimes, and again played up the possibility that the destruction of Unseelie lands had been accidental. Falsehood shot through the idea a second time and Lara struggled to shake it off, wondering abruptly if the thought came from the staff itself, its near-sentience trying to make it, in effect, a victim. Agreement ricocheted through her as the sound of deep brass horns, but her own exasperation flattened the staff’s response. Being manipulated by living, breathing people was aggravating enough. To be the focus of trickery from an ivory staff was absurd, and she was in no mood for it.

A roar opened up inside her skull, a vast crash of magic that seized her own power and wedded it to Ioan’s. Golden light flared everywhere, disguising the destruction around them, and exultation flared across Ioan’s face. A familiar white streak bolted through the gold, not at all the simple doorway of the worldwalking spell, but Lara’s magic creating a true pathway from one place to another.

To the horses, she realized with horror: a straight brilliant line smashing from Kelly’s apartment all the way to the Common. Unified with the staff’s wont for devastation, that path became a far more physical thing than she’d ever built before. It had been a guide in the past; now it lay down a presence of its own, ripping through streets, through homes, through buildings, which all began to fall in on themselves in the path’s aftermath. Even over the sound of music and magic, Lara could hear cries of bewilderment and pain.

She released the staff, trying to claw back her magic, but it was already far too late. True vision showed her the havoc wreaked in mere seconds: a broad swath of the city was a disaster zone, as if struck by earthquakes. Girders jutted from ruined buildings, glass clattered and fell to the earth, bricks and steel creaked and collapsed for mile after mile. Cars lay askew in giant ruts that had torn open beneath them, astonished and frightened people climbing free all over the city. Everything was hazy with golden light that emanated not from the setting sun on the horizon, but from Ioan’s magic, still pouring into the worldwalking spell. Half the city would be pulled with them into the Barrow-lands, if he didn’t let go of the staff.

Kelly’s apartment had become a quiet point, the eye of the storm. The floor stabilized under Lara’s feet and she glanced down, dismayed but not surprised to see the hard white flare of her true path supporting her. Supporting all of them, as she’d once imagined it could do. That was still the staff’s power, clinging to the magic she’d released, rather than her own active will. Hands clenched, she tried to quiet the music in her mind, searching for a static softness to drown it out and quell magic.

Instead, hoofbeats filled her ears as the horses burst down the road she and Ioan had laid. He yelled in delight, reaching for a mane to swing up by as one passed him, and letting the staff hang from only one hand as he did so.

Dafydd, wielding a broken chair leg like a baseball bat, smashed it into Ioan’s forearm as he mounted. Ioan’s arm spasmed with the strength of the blow, and he shot a look of astonished injury at Dafydd as his numb fingers dropped the staff.

Lara snatched it up, and the worldwalking door closed around them all, leaving Boston’s destruction in their wake.

Rubble shattered against black mother-of-pearl flooring and splashed into Ioan’s scrying pool at the heart of the Unseelie city. Lara ducked, arm folded over her head as iron bars clanged, bouncing down from above. Kelly let go short, repeated screams as more debris fell around them. Dickon hovered over her protectively, broad shoulders taking some of the scree that dropped, though he began to swear when a handful of larger pieces pelted him.

Lightning exploded everywhere, turning wreckage to dust. Lara lowered her arm to peer at Dafydd, a few feet away with his hands curved upward and satisfaction twisting his mouth. “I am accepted home again.”

“And you are a raging fool!” Aerin strode past Dafydd to haul Ioan off his horse and smash a fist into his jaw all in one smooth motion. The two horses bolted away as Aerin stood over Ioan, fury making her voice harsh. “Did you not forbid the Truthseeker to use that weapon? What idiocy compelled you? How many mortals now lie dead because of you?”

Ioan sagged under the assault, though not, Lara thought, because he lacked the means to defend himself. She’d seen them both in battle, and Aerin’s prowess, indubitably greater than Dafydd’s, paled before Ioan’s. But he made no attempt at defense, only gazed past her at where Lara crouched with the staff. “It seemed to be the only