Anne Bishop - Shadows and Light

No matter how she turned, she was still caught in those emotional thorns. “No. But I needed ... a different place ... so my grandfather brought me here where I would still have kin. That’s why—” She bit her lip.

“Why what?” Neall asked quietly.

“I didn’t know.” The words burst out of her. “I was nineteen when Nora and Kief died. My path wasn’t something I could change, so I couldn’t keep you here with me.”

“Ashk.” Neall reached out to touch her arm in comfort.

She stepped away from him. “I thought it would be for you the way it had been for me. People who were kin who would become family. I thought they would take care of you.”

“They did take care of me.”

Tears stung her eyes. “No, they didn’t. ‘Poor relation.’ I know what that means among the gentry in the human world. They had no right to say that to you. They had no right.”

Neall sighed. “Ari cares about me. I think she’s colored things blacker than they were.”

“And I think you try to heap flowers over a pile of shit to cut down the stink. It doesn’t make it any less a pile of shit.”

He said nothing for a long moment. “You told me I had to leave in order to learn the ways of my father’s people. And I did. And now I’ve come home. If I’d never gone to live with Baron Felston, I never would have known Ari. Shadows and light. Isn’t that what you keep showing me during these walks through the woods? She’s my light, Ashk.”

“If I hadn’t left my family and gone wandering, I wouldn’t have ended up here in the western part of Sylvalan,” Kief had said. “I wouldn’t have ended up with Nora.”

“Come on,” Neall said quietly when she didn’t respond. “I’ll walk you back to the Clan house.”

A subtle change in the woods instantly commanded her attention. The power was old and waning, but it still called to her.

“No,” Ashk said. “I have other business. You go home.”

He studied her a moment, then bowed and turned to leave.

“Neall.” She hesitated, then decided she could tell him this much. “Ari planted beans this year. Lots of beans. Because they’re your favorite.”

She watched him absorb the message. Even after he left, she remained where she was, sensing his presence in the woods. When she was certain that he wouldn’t come back, she turned and followed the trails that led to the oldest part of the woods.

She walked for several minutes, listening to the chirping of birds and the chattering of squirrels. Finally, she saw the stag, standing so still beside the girth of an old oak tree. If he’d been a true deer, his antlers would have been young and velvet-covered in this season instead of a full, mature rack. But he was one of the Fae in his other form.

“Kernos,” she whispered. It had been many years since he’d been the Green Lord, since he’d been the Lord of the Woods. That didn’t matter. Not to her, anyway.

She approached him slowly, bowed when she stood before him. “You honor me with your presence, Grandfather.”

He didn’t move. Just watched her with those dark eyes.

“There are shadows gathering in other parts of Sylvalan,” she said quietly. “If they aren’t stopped, they’ll creep into our part of the land, too.”

He turned and walked up the trail, his left hind leg dragging a little, just as it did in his human form ever since the brain seizure three years ago. He’d regained most of his strength, but his left leg still dragged a little and his speech was a bit slurred.

Obeying the silent command, Ashk followed him.

The Clan where he lived was a day’s journey from here. He shouldn’t be traveling so far alone. Not anymore. Not that there was anything that would dare touch him while he was in her home woods.

He had been there for her. Always. He had taught her to be a Lady of the Woods, and he’d trained her to be so much more.

He was the one who had knelt beside her the first time she’d made the transformation to her other form. He was the one who had petted her, soothed her, encouraged her while the rest of her family recoiled from what she’d become. A rare form. Dangerous. Nothing was safe from her in her other form.

She followed him until they came to a meadow deep in the heart of the woods. He bounded forward into the sunlight. She remained at the edge of the woods, in the shadows, pained by the knowledge that he was no longer fast enough to outrun a predator, no longer strong enough to stand and fight and win.

He looked back at her, waiting.

He used to bring her to this meadow to play. He’d change into the stag and let her chase him. When she was young, he ran just fast enough to let her almost catch him, just fast enough not to bruise her pride. When she got a little older, he ran faster, making her work to keep up with him.

She remembered the day when she caught up to him, ran side by side with him. She remembered the day when she realized she could outrun him—and still ran beside him.

And she remembered the day when he stopped suddenly and she ran past him. They’d stared at each other in that sunlit meadow, and she’d felt his silent, final command.

Taking a slow, deep breath, Ashk stepped into the meadow, changed into a shadow hound.

The stag bounded away.

Her gray, black-streaked coat stood out against the sunlit green, but in the shadows of the woods, or in the moonlight, she would blend in, a predator who wouldn’t be seen until her fangs sank into a throat. There was nothing in the woods—not stag, not wolf, not wild boar—that could stand against her in this form.

The shadow hound raced after the stag, snarling and snapping at his heels, running just fast enough to give him the thrill of the chase but not fast enough to bruise his pride.

Hearing the bell that rang in the Inquisitors’ study room, Ubel headed for the door that led down to the confession chamber he and the other Inquisitors had helped Master Adolfo create in this country house that had been lent to them by a Sylvalan baron. His stride was swift yet unhurried, the only outward sign of his confidence in the security of his position, which was something the other Inquisitors envied— especially since last autumn when the Master Inquisitor returned from this magic-blighted land to the safety of his own country.

Despite his alacrity in answering the summons, he heard the bell ring again—faintly now, since he’d almost reached the stairs that led to the cellar. The Master must be feeling impatient.

Ubel smiled. Not an indulgent smile, but a smile of relief. Adolfo had been too lenient these last few months, too... passive. He drank too much, and he no longer exercised his rod to maintain his vigor. The battle he had fought in Sylvalan last summer had left its marks on him—both physically and mentally. But, perhaps, wringing a confession out of this particular captive had restored some of the Master’s potency.

As Ubel entered the confession chamber, Adolfo turned to face him. The Master Inquisitor, the Witch’s Hammer, was a large man, middle-aged and balding, with a lean scholar’s face and gentle brown eyes that never revealed the man’s razor-sharp mind or burning dedication to the task that had consumed most of his life.

“Ah, Ubel,” Adolfo said. “My left hand.”

There was something sharp, almost hateful, under the words.

Ubel ignored it. It was one thing for a man like Master Adolfo to want assistance in softening a witch to confess her crimes. It was quite another to need assistance. The fight with the Gatherer had left Adolfo with a useless, dead left arm. “What is your will, Master Adolfo?”

“I’m done with the bitch,” Adolfo replied. “She has nothing more to offer us. Take her back to the Old Place where you captured her and release her.”