The Pillars Of The World (40 page)

Ari paled.

Neall scrambled to his feet. It hurt to see her eyes so full of fear, but he couldn’t afford to make it sound like something they could dismiss.

“Now,” Ahern said, sounding calm but implacable. “You’re going to stay here. Neall will go to Brightwood for your things. When he returns, the two of you are leaving. The horses are fresh, and that will give you hours of daylight to put some distance between you and the Black Coats.”

“I can’t leave yet,” Ari protested. Her eyes filled with tears. “I
can’t
. I’m not ready. I haven’t said goodbye.”

“Ari, there’s no time,” Neall snapped.

She looked at both of them, her hands spread in appeal. “I’ll run back. It won’t take long. But I need to do this.”

Neall wanted to scream. She hadn’t seen those men. She hadn’t
felt
those men. How could he make her understand? “By the Mother’s tits, Ari—”

“Don’t you speak of the Mother that way!”

“—who is there to say goodbye to?” Neall demanded. “Morag? If she’s there when I get there, I’ll tell her. If not, when you don’t return, like as not she’ll come here and Ahern can tell her.”

Ari looked at him with eyes that were suddenly far too old. “I would like to say goodbye to Morag,” she said quietly, “but that’s not the reason I have to go back.” Ari reached for his hand. Her fingers curled around his and held on. “I have to say goodbye to Brightwood, Neall. I have to let go of the land. If I don’t, it will always feel unfinished.”

Neall sagged, defeated. If Ari always looked back on this day with regret, what kind of future would they have? Brightwood would always stand between them. He looked at Ahern, hoping the older man would have some argument against this, but Ahern just stared at the distant hills.

“All right,” Ahern said reluctantly. “You go back. You say your goodbyes. But you do it quick—and then you get in the cottage and stay inside until Neall comes for you. The warding spells around the cottage will protect you, but they won’t help if you go beyond the cottage walls.”

Ari seemed about to protest, but she caught herself and simply nodded. She picked up Merle, handed him to Neall, and said, “You’d better shut him up somewhere so he doesn’t follow me ho—” She pressed her lips together for a moment. “Back to Brightwood.” She gave the puppy one last caress, then turned and ran.

“Come on,” Ahern said. “We’ll shut him up in the gelding’s stall. He’ll be fine there for now.”

Neall hugged the squirming puppy, but it was the man he looked at. “I’ll miss you.”

Ahern shook his head. “Don’t look back, young Neall. You go and don’t look back.”

“That philosophy the Fae live by makes it very easy not to take responsibility for anything.”

Ahern didn’t speak for a long time. Then, “There are times when it’s an arrogant fool’s excuse. But there are other times when it’s simply the wise thing to do.”

Adolfo drained his wineglass. The tavern didn’t offer the same quality of wine as Felston’s wine cellar, but it was sufficient. “We have fortified ourselves for the difficult tasks to come.”
And at the baron’s
expense
. “Let us go to Brightwood and capture the foul creature who lives there so that we can bring her back to the baron’s estate for questioning.”

“Questioning?” Felston glanced around the inn and lowered his voice. “There’s no need for questioning.

You have my daughter’s statement and the confession you got from the Gwynn woman yesterday.”

“I have those confessions,” Adolfo agreed, watching the baron pale at the significance of those words.

Yes, the baron was going to be most generous when it came to settling his account. “But the witch must confess to her crimes. She must admit her guilt. She must have time to regret the harm she has done.

Therefore, she will be taken to the room at your estate my Inquisitors prepared for such questioning, and she will confess.”
And then she will die
.

Morag paused at the edge of the meadow, watching the wounded mare graze. Ari must have taken the other horses to Ahern’s. She looked to the west, wondering if she should go to that hill where the wind always blew and tell Astra that Ari was leaving.

Astra.

Something had been nagging at her, trying to catch her attention. But meeting Morphia and then trying to persuade the dark horse to gather his courage and go down the shining road again had pushed it aside.

Now . . .

Astra. What was it about Astra?

The Fae are the Mother’s Children. But we are the Daughters. We are the Pillars of the World.

Aiden had mentioned something about the Pillars of the World.

The answers are in plain sight, if you choose to look for them.

I want to ask him if he would bring the journals over to his house. I don’t want them left here. . . .

My family’s history. Brightwood’s history, really.

“Hurry,” Morag said, pressing her legs against the dark horse’s sides. He galloped across the meadow, right to the kitchen door.

Sliding off his back, Morag threw the kitchen door open. “Ari?” When she got no answer, she closed the door and hurried to the dressing room adjoining Ari’s bedroom. She’d seen the glass-doored bookcase the other day when the sun stallion and the dark horse had played “tease the puppy,” but she hadn’t thought of it since.

She opened the glass doors and pulled out the last journal on the right.

I am Astra, now the Crone of the family. It is with sorrow that I have read the journals of the ones
who came before me. We shouldered the burden and then were dismissed from thought
—
or were
treated as paupers who should beg for scraps of affection. We have stayed because we loved the
land, and we have stayed out of duty. But duty is a cold bedfellow, and it should no longer be
enough to hold us to the land
.

Morag read a little further, but there was nothing Astra hadn’t already said to her. She replaced that journal, skipped over several, then pulled out another.

We are the Pillars of the World. The Fae no longer remember what that means. Or else they no
longer care and just expect us to continue as we have done for generations. I know why they
forgot us. I am old now, but I remember my Fae lover well, the father of my daughter. I remember
his charm
—
and I remember his arrogance. The Fae, he had said, have no equal. And that may be
true. It also explains why they don’t want to remember the ones who had been more powerful
—

and still are, in our own way, more powerful. They do not want to remember that it was the
Daughters who had the magic needed to create Tir Alainn, to shape the Otherland out of dreams
and the branches of the Mother
—
and will. As we will it, so mote it be. And so it was. The Fair
Land
.

They can’t abide that, can’t admit that. If they do, they will have to give up their arrogance, their
supreme belief that there is nothing to compare with them. And they do not want to see that they
are fading, that they are so much less than they once had been.

Shaken, Morag replaced the journal, selected another. The
witches
had created Tir Alainn? If that was true, that certainly explained why their disappearance from the Old Places was causing pieces of Tir Alainn to disappear as well.

We are the wiccanfae, the wise Fae. We are the Mother’s Daughters, the living vessels of Her
power. We are the wellsprings. All the magic in this world flows through us, from us. Without us,
it will die.

Morag leafed through a few more pages, then closed the journal in frustration. Ari would be back soon, and she didn’t think the girl would appreciate someone reading her family’s history without permission.

But the answers were here, if only there was time enough to find the right one.

“Why are you the wellsprings? Why are you the Daughters? Why?
Why
?”

She pulled out another journal, close to the beginning. The book was so old the binding cracked when she opened it. Trying to peer at the pages without opening the book too far, she swore in frustration. The writing was spindly, and the ink had faded so much it was barely legible.

She walked over to the window, where she would have the most light, and carefully opened the journal to the first page. She stared at the words.

I am Jillian, of the House of Gaian.

She closed her eyes, counted to ten, opened her eyes.

The words didn’t change.

I am Jillian, of the House of Gaian.

The House of Gaian. The Clan that had disappeared so long ago. The ones who had been Fae— and more than Fae. Not the Mother’s Children. The Mother’s Daughters. Her branches. The living vessels of Her strength.

“Mother’s mercy,” Morag whispered. Tears filled her eyes. She closed the journal before any could fall and ruin the ink.

The House of Gaian hadn’t been lost. They’d been forgotten because they were the Pillars of the World, and the rest of the Fae hadn’t wanted to remember that
they
had not created Tir Alainn.

Rubbing her face against her sleeve, Morag gently replaced the journal, then ran out of the cottage. She swung up on the dark horse’s back.

“We have to go back to Tir Alainn. We have to—” Her voice broke. “We have to tell the Lightbringer and the Huntress about the Daughters.”

The dark horse planted his feet, refusing to move.

“We have to go back one more time—for Ari’s sake.”

He hesitated, then leaped forward. She let him have his head, let him race through meadow and woods, let him charge up the shining road to Tir Alainn. She had to get there before Dianna and Lucian did something foolish. She had to make them understand.

Or stop them if there was no other choice.

“Lucian!” Dianna hurried to meet Lucian as he walked out of that private place in the gardens.

Lucian raised his head, reminding her of her shadow hounds when they scent prey. “Have you heard from Morag?”

“Yes, I heard from her.” It was easier now to feel angry when she wasn’t close enough to the Gatherer to feel afraid. “She refuses to help us!”

Lucian stared at her. “She can’t refuse. She’s Fae. And even the Gatherer yields to the Huntress and the Lightbringer.”

“Not according to the Gatherer,” Dianna said bitterly. “Not only did she refuse to help, she threatened me.
Me
.”

“She’ll regret that,” he said softly.

“Yes, she will.” Dianna felt something inside her slowly untwist. Not even the Gatherer would stand against
both
leaders of the Fae. Not even the Gatherer would dare. “What do we do about that . . . that
Neall?”

“What we should have done in the first place. Take care of the problem ourselves.” He strode toward the stables. “You get your shadow hounds. I’ll get your horse. Meet me at the stables and—” He abruptly stopped speaking and pulled Dianna behind a hedge.

“What?” Dianna said impatiently.

“Morag. Riding toward the Clan house.”

“She’s the
last
person we want to meet right now.”

“Agreed.” Lucian looked at her, a strange excitement shining in his eyes. “So we’ll avoid her.”

They parted, Lucian slipping through the gardens to go the long way around to the stables, and she running to the kennels where her shadow hounds were kept.

Yes, Dianna thought. They would take care of that Neall, and then Ari would have no excuse to leave Brightwood.

Ari stood in the spot where the spiral dance ended— and, in ending, began another kind of dance.

She raised her arms, breathed deep as she began to draw the strength of Brightwood into herself.

The land beneath her feet rolled, spun, swirled, pushed at her as if it were trying to hold in something terrible that was fighting to burst free.

Ari staggered, her arms dropping to help her keep her balance. Stunned, she just stared at the ground that looked no different but felt so strange.

The land doesn’t want me, no longer wants to know me. Can the magic that breathes through
Brightwood somehow sense that I’m going away? Is that why I can’t focus it, can’t keep it from
shifting and scattering? It tingles beneath my feet the way it does when a bad storm is coming.

But the sky is clear.

Shivering despite the warm day, and suddenly uneasy about standing in the meadow, Ari ran to the cottage. As soon as she stepped into the kitchen and closed the door, the fear that made her run like a deer before the hounds disappeared.

She studied the meadow. It looked no different, but something had happened there. The wounded mare had felt it, too, and she was still standing there, watchful.

Maybe the land
hadn’t
rejected her. Maybe, like Neall and Ahern, it had pushed her toward the place where she was the most protected.

Ari smiled.

Great Mother, I leave this place to those who will come after me. May the land I go to be as
generous in its bounty to those who care for it
—
and are in its care
.

Best to make use of the time. Neall would be here soon, and there were still some things to be done.

She took the soup off the stove and placed it on a metal trivet on the worktable. Then she banked the fire in the stove. If Morag returned soon, the soup might still be hot enough to eat. If not, it wouldn’t be difficult to rekindle the fire.

She looked at her biscuits and frowned. She needed some kind of sack. Remembering her small pack, she rummaged in the storage cupboard until she found it. She wrapped the biscuits in a towel, leaving two of them for Morag, wrapped the cheese she had left in another towel, and a jar of berry jam in another.

She filled the two canteens, then slipped them back into their places on the pack.

“Saddlebags,” she muttered, hurrying to the bedroom.

As she walked back to the kitchen, she heard the mare scream.

Dropping the saddlebags on the table, she flung open the top half of the kitchen door.

The mare was lying in the meadow. She kept struggling to rise, but something was wrong with her legs and she couldn’t get to her feet. She screamed, struggled, screamed again.

Ari opened the bottom half of the kitchen door. The air thickened in front of her—the warding spells’

reaction when there was something nearby that shouldn’t be allowed to enter.

Moving from one side of the doorway to the other, she tried to see if there was anything out there.

Nothing.

But the mare kept screaming, and . . . Was that white pus pushing out of one foreleg?

She had to do something. She
had
to. She could run out to the mare and see what was wrong. She couldn’t just stand there and let the animal suffer. It would only take a minute. Just a minute to run out to where the mare struggled.

She took a deep breath—and ran.

She skidded to a stop a few feet away from the mare. It wasn’t pus. It was bone sticking through the skin.

Something had broken the mare’s legs. Broken them so fast the animal hadn’t had time to try to run.

“Mother’s mercy,” Ari whispered. She whirled to run back to the cottage—and saw the men coming around the sides of the cottage, saw more men vaulting over the low garden wall where they must have hidden. She saw the two who wore black coats. And she saw the tall, lean-faced man who now stood between her and the open kitchen door.

The woods. If she could make it to the woods, she might be able to hide from them. She knew every path through Brightwood. If she could just reach the woods . . .

Neall.

If she ran and all of them didn’t follow, what would happen when Neall came?

In that moment of hesitation, someone hit her from behind, landing on top of her when she fell to the ground.