Anne Bishop - The Pillars of the World

Adolfo lifted the cover off his plate, then sat down, intending to consume his meal.

The coachman would have to be dealt with. Obviously being in a country that stank of magic for even a few weeks had affected the man to the point where he was no longer trustworthy. And having too much idle time to gossip with Sylvalan coachmen and grooms was changing the unpalatable into the romantically intriguing.

Adolfo sat back, the food untouched.

Men— human men—were meant to be the masters of the world, but the land was like a coy mistress who would be bountiful one day and withhold her treasures the next. It had to be conquered, stripped of its wildness.

Rather like women. No man who allowed himself to be captivated by the lures of breasts and thighs could call himself his own master—at least, not until he had torn out everything that needed to be stripped from a woman before she would submit to being a proper helpmate. Then, as with the land, he could enjoy the bounty as a man should. Neither land nor woman was as alluring when tamed, but both were far more useful.

Twenty years ago, in Wolfram, his homeland, the men had been ripe for change, and he had given them the key that had helped change flood the country. Men were the conquerors now, the rulers who held the land, and women’s lives, in their hands.

The gentry in Sylvalan were ready for change too. Their land was yielding less and less each year, and many of them resented the bounty they couldn’t touch—rich land owned by women whose magic stood in their way.

So he would give them the same key he and the assistants he had carefully trained over the years had given the men in Wolfram . . . and in Arktos. He had his own reasons for feeding gentry greed until it ripened into a desire to exterminate what couldn’t be tamed, but, in the end, he and the barons both would achieve their goals. They would have the land they coveted and domination over everything within their grasp. And he would destroy the witches.

Morag studied the faint glimmering in the heart of the old wood. When she had come down that road at the dark of the moon, it had been strong and shining.

True, the Veil between this world and the Fair Land had seemed a little thicker and took longer to cross through, but she hadn’t given it much thought. There were many roads that were difficult to use these days.

The dark horse shifted restlessly, then took a step toward the glimmering.

“No,” Morag said, resting her hand on the dark horse’s neck to soothe him. “We can’t get home that way.” Not anymore .

The dark horse stamped his foot. Took another step forward.

“ No ,” Morag said more firmly. Gathering the reins, she turned him away from the glimmering—and temptation. He was a Fae horse and could sense the roads through the Veil as well as she, but he couldn’t tell that the magic that signaled “home” to him wasn’t strong enough anymore to get them back safely.

What had changed in the time between the dark of the moon and the full? she wondered as the dark horse picked his way along the game trail, still fretting because they were going in the opposite direction of where he wanted to go. What had changed? And why?

She was tired, and she was troubled by the number of female spirits she had gathered lately to lead to whatever was beyond the Shadowed Veil. Too many of them were young women, and they had died hard deaths.

Because she was tired, she hadn’t paid attention when she had crossed the boundaries into the Old Place, had only been focused on reaching the road through the Veil and going to Tir Alainn to rest again. Now she drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly.

The air was slightly sour. It always smelled like that in the human world—except in the Old Places. They were as close as the human world came to the feel of Tir Alainn. But this place was already losing that sweetness. Why? Why ?

She opened herself to the magic that filled this land, needing to draw some of its strength into herself. A couple of heartbeats later, she closed herself off from it and hunched in the saddle, one fist pressed against her breast.

Watery soup instead of a rich stew. That’s how the magic felt. Worse, instead of being able to draw strength from it, the land had tried to drain magic from her , as if there was a gaping hole in it that it was trying to fill.

As they entered a clearing where a cottage stood, Morag straightened in the saddle. Even as tired as she was, she could maintain a glamour spell long enough to ask for food and drink. It wasn’t that hard to hide the pointed ears and the feral looks behind a more human mask. Many of the Fae didn’t bother with such things, and she certainly didn’t when she stood as the Gatherer. But the Fae had magic, and the Fae were feared. So it was sensible to approach a human dwelling looking like a human and not frighten the people inside to the point where the door would be barred against her.

Halfway across the clearing, she released the glamour, knowing it wasn’t needed. At the new moon, when she had skirted this clearing on her way out to the human world, she had smelled the woodsmoke, had seen the glow of lamps in the windows. Now the cottage was dark and empty. Not the waiting emptiness of a place where the people were away for a little while and were coming back, but the thick, stark emptiness of abandonment.

And all around the cottage, Morag could feel a deep well of magic drying up, withering like a tree whose tap root had been severed.

Turning away from it, she guided the dark horse to the edge of the clearing. She sensed the presence of the Small Folk, knew they were watching her pass by, but none of them came forward to greet a Lady from Tir Alainn. That, too, was something that had changed in recent years.

But it was the sound that was gathering under the rustle of leaves and water flowing over stone that made her urge the dark horse into a canter. She didn’t slow his pace until they reached the human road a few minutes later. Then she reined in and listened.

It had been nothing more than the wood nymphs and water sprites. She knew that. But it still sounded as if the brook and the trees had been weeping, as if the land itself was grieving the loss of . . . something.

Who had lived in that cottage? Why had they left? And why would their leaving make so much difference to an Old Place in so short a time? Was the magic bleeding out from the land the reason the road through the Veil was no longer strong enough to carry her home?

“We’ll find a place to rest,” Morag said, petting the dark horse’s neck. But not here .

Shivering from weariness and from night air that suddenly seemed colder, she studied the road. She had been traveling slowly but steadily toward the south of Sylvalan until she had reached this Old Place and had used the road through the Veil to return to Tir Alainn for a brief rest. When she came back down the shining road at the dark of the moon, she had drifted on the outskirts of the nearby villages before circling back here. She had no desire to go back to any of those places, no desire to see what might have happened to other women in those villages.

Turning the dark horse, she resumed her journey south.

Ari hurriedly filled the small pack with cheese, apples, and two of the fairy cakes she had made to celebrate the Summer Moon. She strapped two canteens of water into their places on the pack, then looked around. A blanket would be nice, but she didn’t want to be too burdened down. Her cloak would have to do for bedding. With the moon shining tonight, there was no need for a lantern, even if she would have dared use anything that might help someone locate her.