Wayfinder

He wasn’t lying. It was simply that his expectations lay so completely opposite her own as to be astonishing. Lara worked past the emotion to respond with cool certainty: “No. You won’t.”

“I—” Ioan, as astounded by the refusal as she was by the ultimatum, broke off, then scowled in an excellent mimicry of Emyr. “You are alone, Truthseeker, and in the heart of my city. How do you expect to stop me from taking it?”

Lara heard Emyr’s guards shift, closing ranks, preparing to fight. That was answer enough, but the staff thrummed with anticipation that warmed her spine. Emyr had said it abhored a Seelie touch. Even if Lara herself couldn’t stop Ioan with words, the staff itself seemed likely to reject him. “Do you really want to test me, Ioan?”

His lip curled and smoothed again very quickly, as if he’d hoped threat alone might cow her into giving up the staff, but he was wise enough not to press the matter. Lara nodded, satisfied, and went on. “I don’t trust any of you with it. Not you, not Emyr, maybe not even Dafydd. You all have your own agendas. I’m the only outsider.”

“My agenda,” Ioan said through his teeth, “is merely the survival of my people, Truthseeker.”

“By which you mean the Unseelie, despite having argued that Seelie and Unseelie are all one race not two minutes ago.”

Chagrin flushed Ioan’s cheeks. Lara rolled her eyes. “I’m hardly going to give you the staff so you can commit genocide. What I will do is collect every puzzle piece I can and put them together to make the clearest picture possible before doing anything.”

“What gives you the right,” Aerin murmured from the sidelines.

Lara splayed a hand in exasperation. “Dafydd does, by asking me to come here and solve Merrick’s murder in the first place. You all do, by your word for what I am. Truthseeker. You can’t give me that title and then not expect me to go seeking the truth. And you may have thought I would fetch and deliver this staff to you, Ioan, but you yourself named it Worldbreaker. I don’t believe any neutral truthseeker with a weapon like that in her hands would be inclined to offer it to an individual with an ax to grind. What does it take to bring someone back from the … healing waters?” Lara chose the less ominous phrase deliberately. “Is it a spell? Can we bring Hafgan and Dafydd here like the worldwalking spell brought me here?”

Aerin, softly, said, “No one returns from the Drowned Lands,” but Ioan raised a hand to silence her.

“No one returns without help,” he agreed, “but that doesn’t mean no one returns. There are trials to be faced, but they must be faced even when bringing someone to the healing waters. The petitioner must be found worthy.”

“And if they’re not?” Lara wished she hadn’t asked even as the words slipped out. The pitying expressions around her answered as fully as she might need. “Well, you were trying to save Dafydd’s life and you were found worthy. I’m trying to find the truth of what happened to this world, so hopefully that’ll be enough to see me through. I want you to agree to a cease-fire while I’m gone.”

“What makes you so certain we’ll allow you to go?” This time it was Emyr with the half-made threat.

Lara’s eyebrows rose. “Aside from me intending to bring back your son and heir?”

“And my old enemy,” Emyr pointed out. “Perhaps the loss of one is worth the loss of the other.” Aerin’s face tightened, but she held her tongue as Emyr continued. “You are an outsider, Truthseeker, with an agenda of your own. You returned the staff, a dangerous weapon, to the Barrow-lands, and I have no way of knowing you won’t offer it to my enemy or destroy my lands if you’re allowed to run unchecked.”

The staff was suddenly warm again, eager to fulfill Emyr’s expectations. Lara reached for it, moving slowly because she knew the action could be seen as aggressive, and didn’t speak until she had it in her hands, one end resting against the stoneworked floor. It seemed brighter, as if trying to draw attention to itself, and she wondered what kind of picture she made, bedraggled in mortal wear but holding a weapon of immortal make. She drew herself up, aware she was much shorter than the elfin folk around her, but making the best of her presence.

“I have the staff, Emyr, and I’ll defend myself with it if my own power isn’t enough. But I won’t sit idly by while your two factions work to destroy one another. If rousing Hafgan, awakening Dafydd, and lifting the Drowned Lands is what it takes to end this mess, then that’s what I’ll do.”

They couldn’t stop her: the staff all but hummed in her hands, suggesting ways she could make an escape. The earth below would break with one sharp blow, a tunnel tearing through granite to offer her a pathway out. The cavernous roof could be splintered with no more than a surge of willpower. Lara had no doubt the staff could drag her skyward and send her soaring through the shattered ceiling.

And both would destroy the Unseelie city. She knotted her fingers against the staff’s intricate carvings and tried to exude calm, not encouraging any of the dramatic scenarios the weapon proposed. There was a door out. She would use that, like any normal person. Not that she felt normal. She never had been, not with her odd talent, but for the first time, standing there with the staff, she felt as though she had the potential to be vastly more than she was. That she could, if she wanted to, rule this world, and perhaps her own as well.

“He won’t stop you,” Aerin said unexpectedly. Some of the flare left the staff. Lara breathed more easily and blinked toward Aerin, who continued, “I’ll go with you so the Seelie will not be forgotten, no matter how far you travel.”

“And the Unseelie?” Ioan asked.

“It’s your story she looks to corroborate,” Aerin muttered. “I doubt she’ll forget your kind. But send a representative, if you like. Quests are always best done in threes.”

“A point well made.” Ioan smiled and turned to Lara. “I’ll join you.”

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