Laughter danced in Padrick’s eyes. “You didn’t know, did you?”
“Know?”
“It’s a wiccanfae village.”
Aiden’s mouth fell open. “Are you saying it’s an entire village of witches?”
Padrick coughed politely. “Only the women are called witches.”
“Mother’s mercy,” Aiden said weakly. An entire village of people who could trace their roots back to the House of Gaian. No wonder the village had the same feel as an Old Place. With the appearance of Black Coats in the west, no wonder they were wary of strangers.
Remembering the woman and the little girl, Kayla, he realized the Black Coats weren’t the only danger to those people. Would anyone be able to rouse the Clans to protect the witches and the Old Places if they knew there was a place where they could obtain another witch? The Fae might be unwilling to enter the Mother’s Hills, but a village in the west? Oh, yes. Dianna wouldn’t think twice about ordering the men of her Clan to ride to Wiccandale and take a couple of young witches. She wouldn’t care if those women were willing or not, as long as it freed her from being the anchor that held the shining road open at Brightwood. She would justify it as something owed to her because she was the Lady of the Moon.
“Bard.”
Something in Padrick’s voice pulled Aiden’s attention back to the here and now. He wasn’t sure if he was looking at a Fae Lord or the Baron of Breton. He suspected the feral heat he saw in Padrick’s eyes was one of the reasons the man was obeyed so readily.
“It was wonderful bread,” Aiden said softly. “It’s unfortunate that I wouldn’t be able to find my way back to that village.”
Padrick stared at him for a moment before nodding. “If witches were suddenly to go missing, it would displease the Fae in the west —”
Displease the Hunter, you mean.
“— and it would displease me, since Wiccandale is in the county I rule, and I have a responsibility to those people.”
“I understand.”
“Yes,” Padrick said quietly, “I thought you would.” He lifted his chin slightly. “The dance is starting.”
Aiden turned back to the meadow in time to see Ari take the first steps of the dance. He already felt the eddies and currents of magic in this Old Place start to flow. Ashk took Ari’s hand and joined the dance — and the flow became more powerful. One by one, the Fae who had kinship to the House of Gaian joined the dance, and power swirled around the meadow like a contained storm.
Small candles glowed at the edge of the meadow, catching his attention.
Not candles, Aiden realized, feeling his body jolt from the slight shock. The Small Folk had come to watch the dance. It was the magic in them that glowed. He glanced at the musicians. Saw the same misty glow. Last Solstice, that’s how Ari had known her guests weren’t human. With all the power that came from the Great Mother in motion, the magic inside the Fae and the Small Folk shone like stationary beacons. He hadn’t seen it last summer when Ari had danced alone, but here, with so many dancers helping her funnel all that power into the spiral dance, he saw things with a clarity that was almost blinding.
“There,” Padrick breathed softly. “There. Can you feel it?”
Feel what? Aiden wondered. His head was spinning, as if he’d had too much to drink. But it was the dance that was intoxicating him, the music that was thrumming in his blood now.
As the music faded, he heard Ari giving thanks to the Great Mother for the branches of earth, air, water, and fire. Saw flames lick the carefully placed wood of the bonfire. And felt himself lifted up as she released the magic back into the Old Place. The ripples of it flowed through him and traveled on. When she finally lowered her arms, the air smelled sweeter, the land beneath his feet pulsed with life, and passion burned hot inside him.
The dance was done, the dancers rippling out of the spiral in a way that echoed the magic just released. He watched Lyrra walk toward him. The look on her face made him wonder how many other lovers would have an intimate celebration tonight.
He met her. Kissed her in a way that was far too intimate while they were standing in the open with people all around them, but he couldn’t stop himself, and the way she leaned into him and answered the kiss told him she wasn’t thinking of other people either. But her hands kept his pressed against her waist, a prudent compromise of passion and common sense.
He broke the kiss, wondering a bit desperately how offended Ashk would be if he and Lyrra slipped away without seeing her planned entertainment.
“If you’ll excuse me,” Padrick said. “I’m wanted for the next dance.”
The warning under the amusement was enough to make Aiden struggle to get his libido under control — and finally notice that he and Lyrra had a very interested audience.
“Oh,” Lyrra said softly, blushing.
“Well,” Ari said.
“My,” Morphia said.
Neall and Sheridan, who had recently become Morphia’s lover, just grinned at him.
It was the wistful expression on Morag’s face before she turned away to watch whatever was happening in the meadow that made Aiden uncomfortable. Had Death’s Mistress ever had a real lover? It wasn’t something he could ever ask Morag, but the flicker of sadness on Morphia’s face before she linked arms with her sister was answer enough.
Sheridan left them, drawing Aiden’s attention back to the meadow. The large wicker baskets that had been left near the musicians were now open, and the Fae were carefully unwrapping masks.
Aiden shifted uneasily. Each mask was a work of art, shaped and decorated to represent an animal. The children were squirrels, rabbits, mice, and songbirds. Small creatures. Among the adult masks, he saw hawk, raven, owl, wolf, stag, fox. Watching Padrick fit a hawk mask over the top half of his face, he wondered if the adults wore masks that matched their other forms. He searched for Ashk, wanting to know what her other form was. When he saw her, he wasn’t sure what to think.
The mask was female, and feral. Human, but not human. As she passed by one of the torches that had been lit for the musicians, he caught some of the mask’s colors — summer greens twining with the oranges and reds of autumn — but she turned away before he could puzzle out the details.
Ashk walked over to the bonfire. The rest of the Fae formed a large circle around her, the elders of the Clan on the outside ring of the circle, the children in the inner ring, the rest of the adults in between.
The music started. Ashk smiled, turned as the Fae in the circle began to move. She skipped a few steps with one child, moved forward to circle with a stag in a way that was highly suggestive of a mating dance, moved on again to do a few steps with a vixen, stepped within the circle to twirl and dance on her own, always moving with the others in a way that was clearly intended to celebrate life.
Then the music changed, becoming darker, deeper — and Ashk changed with it.
Chilled by her slight smile, Aiden watched her raise her arms as if she were drawing an imaginary bow. The masked Fae moved faster now. She loosed the imaginary arrow, and three of them dropped to their hands and knees.
She drew back another arrow. More of the Fae fell. As the arrow pointed at them, the elder Fae moved out of the circle to stand with their heads bowed. A vixen staggered before she fell. A stag leaped high, his back arched, before he crumbled to the ground. Ashk kept pivoting, firing her imaginary arrows as the music filled the meadow. As the last masked Fae fell to the ground, the music suddenly stopped.
Aiden felt Lyrra shivering beside him. A dance that had celebrated life had become a circle of the slain.
A heartbeat of silence. Two.
The music began again, the same part of the tune that had begun the dance, but quieter this time.
Ashk walked the circle, one hand extended. As she passed, the masked Fae got to their feet and began walking the circle with her again. When they passed behind the bonfire, they stepped out of the circle, forming lines beyond the fire.
Once. T
wice. Three times. As the last notes faded, Ashk stood behind the bonfire, with the rest of the masked dancers spread out behind her.
Aiden couldn’t breathe right. The faces staring back at him were feral and alien, something a part of him recognized — and feared. And Ashk …
In the flickering light, he finally made out the details of her mask. Not a human face decorated with vines and leaves, and yet it was. Not an animal face, but it held that quality, too.
The dancers were breaking formation now, helping each other untie the leather straps that held the masks in place. The spell of the dance should have broken with those ordinary movements. It didn’t. Instead, Aiden had the sense that those ordinary movements were simply a way of donning a different kind of mask.
“What are they?” Lyrra whispered, her voice shaking.
“They’re the Fae,” Morag said softly.
Aiden looked at her. Morag’s eyes were wide and staring. Her lips were slightly parted to help her breathe. And as she watched Ashk, still masked, walk around the bonfire and move toward them, she looked as if she’d finally seen the answer to something that had puzzled her.
“They are the Fae,” Morag said. “And Ashka…”
Ashk walked up to Morag, stood close enough that if either of them had extended a hand, they would have touched.
That close, Aiden saw the mask and shivered. It was the woods come alive. Life and death. Shadows and light.
Ashk stood in front of Morag, a strange smile curving her lips.
“And Ashk,” Morag said softly, “is the Hunter.”
Morag carefully closed the shutters over the window, adjusting the slats to let as much cool air in as possible. Until the nighthunters’ appearance in the Old Place, there’d been no reason to shutter the windows at night. Now it was a sensible precaution.
She climbed into bed, pulling the sheet up around her, not relaxed enough to sleep despite the fatigue pulling at her. Perhaps she should have stayed with Neall and Ari. The cottage was her home, after all. But Morphia and Sheridan had stayed at the cottage, and she’d come back with the rest of the Fae to the Clan house.
Who are you, Ashk?
She’d been asking that question in one way or another since she’d arrived at this Old Place. Now she finally had the answer.
Someone tapped softly on her door. Before she could move, Aiden slipped into her room, carrying a small harp. When he reached the bed, he sat near her feet, shifting until he could hold the harp comfortably.
Morag’s chest tightened. She pulled her feet up and hugged her knees. There’d been a moment this evening, after the spiral dance, when she’d felt sad and wistful that there wasn’t a man like Aiden or Sheridan or Neall who looked at her with the heat of passion in his eyes. But she didn’t want a man who was committed to another woman, and she didn’t want pity from the Bard. “Aiden —”
“Lyrra knows I’m here,” Aiden said quietly. His hands rested on the harp strings for a moment before he began playing idle notes. “We have to talk, and this is the best way to do that privately.”
“All right.” She shifted a little. “Let me light a few more candles. This one isn’t enough.”
“Don’t,” Aiden said, his head bent over the harp. “Sometimes things are said more easily in the dark.”
Morag shifted again. One candle made the room too dark, too intimate. Enough light for lovers, but not for friends. Because it was Aiden, she stayed where she was.
He said nothing. Just played idle notes on his harp. It was like listening to the summer leaves stirred by a soft breeze or the trickle of water in a fountain. Her body began to relax into the sound until she was drifting in some easy place where her mind was at rest.
“Tonight,” Aiden said softly, “what did you mean when you said, ‘They’re the Fae’?”
She drifted with the harp’s notes. He was right. It was easier to say some things in the dark. “They still are what the rest of us used to be, what we’ve forgotten how to be. They’re the Fae. They’ve never forgotten their place in the world, never forgotten that there is death as well as life, shadows as well as light. For them, Tir Alainn is a sanctuary, a place to rest. But they never left the world, and the rest of us have become a pale reflection of what we used to be.”
“You’re being too harsh.”
“Am I? If the Inquisitors had come to the west instead of the eastern part of Sylvalan, the first witch they caught still would have died. But not the second one, not any of the others after that. It wouldn’t have mattered what the barons or the gentry or any other human said, the Fae in the west would have stopped it. What does that say about the rest of us?”
Aiden sighed. “I don’t know, Morag. I don’t know if the rest of the Fae will pay any more attention to Ashk than they did to you or me.”
“Then I pity them.”
Aiden stopped playing and looked at her. “Why feel pity for them?”
“Because the Hunter will have none.”
* * *
Ashk lay curled against Padrick’s side, her head resting on his shoulder. His lovemaking tonight had ranged from fierce to tender and back again, demanding enough to make her forget everything but him. But they needed to talk, and she couldn’t push it aside any longer.
“Padrick …”
He turned his head, pressed his lips against her forehead. “I want to say something first. Then I’ll listen to whatever you have to tell me.”
Her heart stuttered. Found its rhythm again. “All right.”
He sighed. Shifted a little to draw her closer. “I fell in love with you the night I met you, and I wanted you in my life in every way you would let me have you. But I was a gentry baron, and I needed the legal contract of a human marriage so that my children could inherit my estate and other property, and my male heir could become the next baron. Because that was a human need, I followed human custom, which is usually to ask a woman’s father for permission to broach the question of marriage. You’d never mentioned your father. Never talked about your family at all. Except for your grandfather.
“I went riding in the woods one afternoon, trying to think of a way to ask you where to find him without telling you why I wanted to find him. Suddenly there was a stag standing in the middle of the trail. He stared at me for a long moment, then turned and walked down the trail. I followed him to a meadow, and he changed into a man.”
“Kernos,” Ashk said softly.
“Kernos,” Padrick agreed. “The old Lord of the Woods. If he’d been an old baron, I would have known exactly what to say, but he looked at me with those eyes that had seen so much, knew so much, and I started stammering like some foolish schoolboy. He cut me off just by raising his hand. And he told me that life has its seasons, just like the woods. He said we would have a green season, a time when life would swell and grow, and he hoped it would be a long season in our lives, one that lasted many years. But the day would come when the world needed the Hunter and the green season of our lives would give way to the next — and when that day came, I would have to let you go. He told me I needed to be sure that I could let you go, and if I couldn’t, then he wouldn’t interfere with my being your lover but he would never consent to your being my wife.”
“But you did ask me to be your wife, and he stood with me when the magistrate spoke the words for the human ceremony.” Ashk felt tears welling up. She shut her eyes to hold them back.
“Yes, he stood with you, and he stood by us during the green years. But the season has changed, Ashk, and Sylvalan needs the Hunter. So I have to let you go.”
Ashk swallowed the tears. She drew in a breath and choked on a sob.
“No,” Padrick murmured, cradling her. “No regrets, Ashk. No tears. We’ll get through this. We will. The seasons will turn again, and we’ll have more green years ahead of us.”
“I don’t want to leave you and the children.”
“I know. We’ll be here, waiting for you.”
Ashk wiped her eyes. After
a long pause, she said, “I’m going to cut my hair.”
Padrick shifted, propping himself on one elbow to look down at her. “Cut your hair?”
He sounded so shocked, she almost smiled. “I can’t take the chance of having a braid come loose and the hair tangling with the arrows when I need one.”
“I know, but … Will you braid it first so that it can be kept?”
Now she did smile. “I doubt Caitlin needs or wants her mother’s braided hair.”
His voice was rough with emotion. “I’m not asking for Caitlin.”
She nodded, afraid she’d end up weeping if she tried to speak. When she thought she had enough control, she took a deep breath, let it out in a sigh. “I’d better get it done.”
Padrick rolled, pinning her to the bed. “Not yet. The Hunter will rise from this bed, and that’s the way it needs to be. So let me make love to the Green Lady one last time.”
Ashk wrapped her arms around him. “One last time.”
Chapter Thirty-one
Gritty-eyed and achy from a restless night and too little sleep, Morag stepped out of the Clan house. She shivered in the cool morning air and wished she’d thought to bring a shawl with her. Usually she enjoyed the coolness of morning before the day yielded to summer heat. Now she wanted the heat and bright sunlight of midday. She wanted to sit somewhere open and quiet and let the heat bake the tension out of her body, melt the worry that had chased her through her dreams.
Sylvalan will change, no matter what Ashk decides today. The question is, can we live with how it changes?
Hearing movement behind her, Morag glanced over her shoulder. Aiden and Lyrra stood in the doorway, looking at the Fae who were helping themselves to tea and hot breads from the outdoor stove. Neither of them looked like they’d had an easy night.
“Blessings of the day to you, Morag,” Aiden said. “Blessings of the day,” Morag replied. She looked at Lyrra, then at the Fae going about their usual morning tasks. “They’re no different from who they were yesterday.” “I know,” Lyrra said. “But…” But now you know why they’re different from us. The rattle of wheels caught Morag’s attention. A few moments later, Ari and Neall arrived in the pony cart, followed by Morphia and Sheridan on horseback.