Shadows and Light (13 page)

The butler took a few steps away from the house, glanced around to see if anyone else was about, then said with quiet intensity, “You are a man with an open mind?”

“About most things,” Aiden replied. But not where the Inquisitors were concerned. Never where they were concerned. Especially not after — No, he couldn’t think about that. He had to keep his mind focused on the immediate task of finding food and shelter for Lyrra and the horses.

“I do not believe the baron would object if you used the lanes on the estate instead of going back to the main road since that would lengthen your journey,” the butler said, giving Lyrra a worried look. “Go on past the stables and follow the brook until you reach a stone bridge. Cross the
bridge and follow the lane. The ladies who live on that land sometimes offer shelter to travelers.”

Aiden almost asked why he needed an open mind toward anyone willing to offer shelter — and then he understood what the butler was carefully not saying. His heart lifted one moment, then began pounding anxiously the next.

Please. Great Mother, please don’t let us be too late this time
.

When he mounted his horse, Lyrra made the effort to raise her head and look at him. She was pale from exhaustion, and the dark smudges under her eyes seemed deeper than they’d been even an hour ago.

“Just a bit farther,” he murmured as he gently urged his horse forward. “Just a bit farther.”

She didn’t ask where they were going or how much “a bit farther” really was. She just slumped in her saddle and let her mare follow the packhorse Aiden led.

He didn’t dare let her see how much she worried him. She’d withdrawn from him. Withdrawn from everything. All her energy, all her focus was on staying in the saddle and going forward. Her sleep, like his, had been restless the past two nights, torn by dreams of blood and pain. He wondered if she, too, heard that young voice pleading to be allowed to die. He couldn’t ask because he didn’t want to remind her of anything that might not be preying on her mind.

As if either of us is going to forget
. He wondered if there would be a story or a poem from her that would be a cry of rage and sorrow. And he wondered what wild, grieving song would rise from him one day.

When he reached the stone bridge, he hesitated.

“An Old Place?”

Hearing hope and horror in equal measure in Lyrra’s question, he looked back at her and said carefully, “The butler at the manor house said the ladies here sometimes offer shelter to travelers.”

There was something so terrible about the way she stared at him that he turned away from her.

The witches at the last Old Place they’d come to had also offered shelter to travelers. That’s what the Small Folk had told him bitterly. If someone asked for shelter, it was given. So there hadn’t been anything strange about four men coming to that house at dusk one day. Four men who looked like dusty, weary travelers.

The Small Folk hadn’t become uneasy until the second day because it had rained the first day after the strangers arrived, and, noticing one man go to the barn to tend the animals, they had reckoned everyone else had chosen to stay inside out of the wet.

But the second day, the men left late in the afternoon — and rode out in a hurry.

That’s when some of the Small Folk went to the house and found the warding spells that usually protected the house were gone. So they went inside — and they found the witches.

Two hours later, Aiden and Lyrra rode up to that house.

The youngest witch was still alive, had been left in a room with the bodies of her mother, grandmother, and elder sister. The men, whom Aiden strongly suspected were Inquisitors, hadn’t been worried about leaving her. There was nothing anyone could have done to mend her poor tortured body.

Please, let it end. Please, let me die. Please
.

If he’d known where to find Morag, he would have begged her to come to that house and take the girl’s spirit from that suffering body. Without the Gatherer, he and Lyrra and the Small Folk did what they could to make her more comfortable, which was pitifully little.

Please, let me die. Please
.

Lyrra stayed with the girl while he and the Small Folk dug the graves for the other three women. He didn’t ask the small men if any of the Fae had bothered to make
themselves known to the witches. At one point, while he was resting his back and hands, he wondered if he should ride up the shining road to Tir Alainn and warn the Fae that the road would be closing soon. Then he looked at the half-dug grave and went back to work. The Fae could take care of themselves. When had they ever done anything else?

The girl died at dusk on the second day after they’d arrived at that Old Place. While Lyrra washed the body, he and the small men went out to dig another grave.

They’d barely broken ground when one of the small men noticed the swarm of nighthunters flying toward them and gave a cry of warning.

Shouting at Lyrra to close the windows, Aiden dropped his shovel and ran to the barn. The house was still sturdy enough, but the barn had been neglected, and he couldn’t leave the horses in a structure that would make them easy prey.

It didn’t occur to him until he led the horses out of the barn that he didn’t have a chance of reaching the house before the nighthunters attacked.

A stone shot from a sling knocked one of the nighthunters down. The small men shouted at him to make good use of his legs as they shot clods of dirt and small stones at the creatures.

He ran to the house, got himself and the horses inside. The small men continued to hold off the nighthunters long enough to reach the house, too. They huddled together that night, listening to the nighthunters’ bodies hitting the shutters as the creatures tried to find a way into the house. Then they listened to the screams of agony from the three ghosts when the creatures finally abandoned the living and sought another kind of sustenance by devouring the spirits of the dead.

The next morning, knowing what would happen once the sun went down, none of them could bring themselves to bury the girl. So they dug up earth and covered her with it where
she lay on the bed. They put a bowl of water on the bedside table, set the stub of a candle next to it, and, for a few tense minutes, opened the bedroom window to let in fresh air.

Earth, air, water, fire. The four branches of the Great Mother.

He didn’t know if there were special words that should have been said, so he played his harp for a few minutes. Lyrra sang a poem about witches that she had written last winter and that he’d recently set to music.

Then they closed up the house, saddled the horses, said good-bye to the Small Folk, and rode away.

Now here they were with only a bridge separating them from another Old Place.

Aiden took a deep breath, let it out slowly. Brushed his heels against his gelding’s sides to urge the animal forward.

A small stone hit his boot.

“Deceiver,” a voice hissed.

Aiden looked down. Even knowing what to look for, it still took him a moment to locate the water sprite standing on a flat stone near the bank of the brook. She stared at him with such loathing, he couldn’t suppress the shiver that went through him.

“Deceiver,” she hissed again.

“We mean no harm,” he said quietly.

“Then show the Daughters your true face. Let them see who stands before them before they bid you welcome.” She waited a moment. When he didn’t respond, she gave him a knife-edged smile.

Aiden urged his horse forward, not sure what he expected, but not feeling easy until Lyrra was across the bridge. When he looked back, the sprite had climbed the bank high enough to peer over the edge. Her eyes were still filled with loathing, and her smile was still knife sharp. He wondered if she had a particular reason for disliking the Fae, or if it was simply because the Fae had always
dismissed the Small Folk as insignificant, lesser beings who were expected to obey the Fair Folk’s commands.

He almost turned back, almost tried to tell her about the Inquisitors and why it was necessary to keep watch. But if his own kind wouldn’t listen to him, there was no reason to think she would trust anything he might say. So he continued down the lane, with the packhorse and Lyrra trailing behind him.

Strength flowed from the land, filled him with every breath he took. It made him dizzy, as if he’d drunk too much strong wine, and so thirsty for more he wanted to gulp it down. Fighting to stay alert, he looked up and saw the Mother’s Hills.

The Fae avoided the Mother’s Hills. Perhaps it was simply because there were no shining roads there that anchored Tir Alainn to the human world, and there were no Old Places. Perhaps there
was
something . strange . about those hills. Or perhaps the Fae said the hills were strange because they sensed that they weren’t welcome there.

When they came in sight of a manor house, Aiden reined in, waited for Lyrra to come up beside him. She studied the well-kept house, then looked at him.

“Perhaps I misunderstood what the butler said,” Aiden said carefully. The homes they’d seen in the other Old Places had ranged from large cottages like the one Ari had lived in to places that were little better than one-room hovels. Neither of them had seen a manor house like this in an Old Place. The signs of gentry prosperity were unnerving. They’d seen no sign before now that witches lived this well.

“The magic is still strong here,” Lyrra said, but there was a trace of doubt in her voice.

“And the water sprite referred to the ladies as Daughters.” Aiden sighed. “Come on, then. We won’t find out anything standing here.”

As they rode toward the house, a dark-haired woman raced through the arch that Aiden guessed led to the stable yard. She slid to a stop when she saw them.

“Did you see a black dog and a string of sausages?” she demanded.

“No, Mistress,” Aiden replied. “I regret we have not.”

The woman put her hands on her hips and yelled, “Idjit! Come back here, you feeble-minded excuse for a dog!”

Since they were here to beg food and shelter, Aiden didn’t think it prudent to point out that a dog who could steal sausages probably wasn’t feeble-minded.

No dog appeared. Not even a bush rustled to indicate where the thief might be hiding.

The woman let out an exasperated sigh, then turned to study Aiden and Lyrra. There was a friendly wariness in her eyes that made Aiden uncertain if they would get much help here but also made him feel relieved that she wouldn’t assume all travelers were good people.

“Blessings of the day to you,” she said.

“Blessings of the day, Mistress,” Aiden replied. “I’m Aiden. This is my wife, Lyrra.”

She studied them, then studied the carefully wrapped instruments tied on the packhorse. “Minstrels?”

“Minstrel and storyteller,” Lyrra said.

“The Bard and the Muse,” Aiden said.

“Aiden!” Lyrra looked shocked.

Aiden smiled at the witch. Let her draw her own conclusions about a couple of entertainers who had enough gall to use titles that belonged to the Fae and yet couldn’t coax an audience to part with a few coppers. Not that they’d tried to earn any coins in the past couple of days, despite having an empty purse.

“I’m Breanna,” the witch said.

“That’s a lovely name.”

She ignored the flattery while her sharp eyes continued
to study them. “You look like you’ve had hard traveling the past few days.”

Aiden’s smile faded. He heard the catch in Lyrra’s breathing and wondered what he could say in explanation if she suddenly burst into tears.

“Yes,” he said. “It’s been hard traveling.”

Breanna said nothing for a long moment. Then, “Come this way. Clay will see to your horses.”

She led them through the archway and called for Clay.

After they handed over the horses, they followed Breanna to the house. Aiden slipped an arm around Lyrra’s waist, as much to offer comfort as to provide support.

Breanna stopped at the threshold, drew a gold chain from beneath her shirt, and held up the pendant. “Do you know what this is?”

Yes, he knew what it was. “It’s a pentagram.” The witches’ symbol for their connection with the Mother, the symbol for earth, air, fire, water, and spirit.

“Do you understand who we are?”

“You’re the Mother’s Daughters.”

The way her eyes widened and then narrowed told him he’d made a mistake of some kind, but his mind and body recognized this as a safe place to rest, and it was getting harder to think clearly, getting harder to move.

“Come in and be welcome,” Breanna said, stepping across the threshold.

Aiden felt tears sting his eyes as he helped Lyrra enter the house. He blinked quickly to banish them. How could he explain why a simple phrase could effect him so much? How could he tell these women that he’d feared he’d never hear that phrase again, that he’d always arrive too late? How could he say nothing when he knew what might happen the next time a stranger rode across that stone bridge?

“Breanna?” An older woman with gray-streaked dark hair entered the kitchen, followed by a middle-aged
woman wearing a fashionable gentry riding outfit. “We have guests?”

“Entertainers,” Breanna said. “They need a place to stay tonight.” Turning toward Aiden, she added, “This is Nuala, my grandmother. And this is Elinore …a neighbor.”

“And mother of the Baron of Willowsbrook,” the middle-aged woman added.

She wants us to know these women have connections
, Aiden thought. Said to the wrong person, that could put her family in as much danger as the witches. “Ladies.”

“They need some food,” Breanna said.

“They might also appreciate a bath,” Nuala said. Then she smiled, her expression sympathetic and slightly amused, as if she understood exactly how hard a choice she’d just presented to them.

“Bath, is it?” another voice said as shoes clomped to the inner kitchen door. “I’ll say they need a bath. Mother’s tits! You can smell them two rooms away!”

“Glynis!”
Nuala said sharply.

The woman stepped into the kitchen far enough to see Aiden and Lyrra. Her face reddened.