Anne Bishop - The Pillars of the World

He smiled at her, and she knew with unshakable certainty that he was a man who reveled in inflicting pain. He was a man who found controlling and manipulating others the most intense form of seduction.

“Nothing,” he said.

Her only answer was to look at the ground behind him.

His smile wavered. He glanced down, then cried out as he reached for his body. His hands passed through it.

“You bitch!” he screamed. “What have you done?”

She ignored him. Her rage had come and gone as swiftly as a violent storm, leaving her cold and exhausted. But there was still work to do. She looked down at the dying woman.

“Gath . . . rer?”

“Yes,” Morag said, touching the woman’s head gently. “I am the Gatherer.”

“Sum . . . merland. Please.” The words were slurred, the effort to say that much horrific.

“I’ll take you to the Shadowed Veil.” Her power reached out again, and she quietly gathered the woman’s soul. As the link between soul and body unraveled, the woman’s breath came out with a relieved sigh. It was the last sound, the last movement she made.

When Morag rose to her feet, the woman’s ghost stood beside her.

Feeling awkward, Morag asked a question she had never asked before. “Should the body be taken somewhere?”

The woman shook her head. “The Small Folk will take it home and give it to the Mother.”

“Home?”

The woman looked at the trees Morag had been riding through before Death had called her. “The Old Place is . . . was my home.”

Morag felt the land darken, as if thick clouds had formed a shroud around the sun. “Come.” She turned toward the dark horse but didn’t mount. Not quite looking at the woman, she said, “Why did they do this to you?”

Sorrow filled the woman’s ghostly eyes. “Because I’m a witch.”

Witch. The word seemed to echo through the meadow.

How many of the young women that I have taken to the Shadowed Veil would have given me the same answer if I had asked?

“Come,” Morag said, mounting her horse. The woman’s ghost floated up to ride behind her.

“Wait!” the young man’s ghost shouted. “What about me? You can’t leave me here!”

Morag looked at him. “Yes, I can.”

She urged the dark horse forward. It cantered across the meadow, not back toward the Old Place, but toward a break in the trees.

Unlike the roads that crossed the Veil into Tir Alainn, the road to the Shadowed Veil would open anywhere when one of Death’s Servants summoned it. She could have opened that road right in the meadow, but she hadn’t wanted the young man’s ghost to be able to reach it before it closed again. So she rode out of the meadow and continued until she was well out of sight. Unless they were released by someone who had the power to set them on the soul’s road, ghosts were held to a place. Since he had died in the meadow, he would be able to wander all through it, but he could never go beyond it.

And she would never return to it. She would take the witch to the Shadowed Veil and then head west, deeper into Sylvalan. She would return to the Midlands, to the part of Tir Alainn where her own Clan dwelled, and there she would finally rest for a while.

You’ll only break your own heart if you try to help them.

The one who had been the Gatherer before her had been right about that. Let the humans take care of themselves, if they could. But the witches . . . Ah, the witches. That would require some thought.

When she got home, she would ask the Clan bard what he knew about the witches. And she would ask where the Bard was staying these days. If anyone had the answers she was seeking, it was Aiden.

After coming down the road through the Veil, Dianna skirted the edge of Brightwood, keeping to the game trails, where she was less likely to be seen. It would have been easier to simply cross the meadow to reach the cottage, but she had a stop to make first in order to make her plan work. Her mare was too distinctive for anyone not to notice, and the glamour that successfully masked the Fae when they wanted to appear human never quite worked on the horses. So she would get a horse that wasn’t so obvious—and she knew who would give her one. At least, she thought he would.

Her chest tightened at the thought of approaching him.

Crossing the road, she let the mare ease into a slow canter over the same fields she’d ridden through at the Summer Moon.

She didn’t understand the Fae Clans in the west of Sylvalan who spent as much time in the human world as they did in Tir Alainn. There was something . . . uncomfortable . . . about being around members of those Clans. They were more feral, and darker in intent, than the rest of the Fae.

No, she didn’t understand them. She understood even less a Fae who had forsaken Tir Alainn completely to live out his life among these humans. If he wanted to pretend to be human, he should at least give up the title he had held for three generations so that someone else could stand in his place. Oh, he’d accepted any challenges for the title over the years.

He’d won every one of them—and his challengers didn’t always survive.

What made her most uneasy was that she wasn’t sure how much deference she could demand from him. She wasn’t even sure there was anyone who could make demands of him. And because of what he commanded, he could be a dangerous enemy for human and Fae alike.

There really wasn’t a choice. She was concerned about Lucian, and pretending to be a human gentry lady really was the simplest way to find out what she needed to know. Which meant getting the loan of a horse. Which meant approaching the Lord of the Horse.

Reining the mare back to a sedate trot, Dianna wove the glamour magic around herself while she was still far enough away from the farmhouse that no one would be able to make out the face behind the human mask. She’d dressed carefully in a riding habit that resembled closely enough the garments worn by gentry ladies. The glamour simply completed the illusion.

A few moments after trotting into the yard, she realized the glamour would fool no one here.

The young man who was the first to notice her took a sharp look at her, than a longer, sharper look at her mare. After the slightest hesitation, he touched his fingers to the brim of his cap as a salute, then strode quickly toward the paddocks nearest the stable where several other men were gathered to watch a couple of young horses being trained.

Distaste rippled through Dianna, a natural enough reaction to meeting a human who had so much Fae blood in him that his eyes remained clear-sighted instead of being clouded by the glamour. She should have considered that children sired by Fae men would seek out a place like this where their mixed heritage would be tolerated, if not accepted outright.

She pushed the thought away when the strongly built, gray-haired man turned away from the paddocks and approached her. There was no welcome in his dark eyes, nor any sign of deference in his manner.

“Lord Ahern,” Dianna said courteously.

“Huntress,” he replied gruffly.

He knew who she was. Not just that she was Fae, but who she was. And it made no difference to him.

“I’ve come to ask a favor,” she said, offering a smile that normally had other men eagerly promising to fulfill her slightest whim.

“You can ask.”

She hadn’t really expected that smile to work, but she would have felt better if it had softened him just a little. “I need the loan of a horse.”

He studied her mare for a long moment. “Why? What’s wrong with her ?”

Dianna’s teeth clenched. It took a little effort to get her jaw relaxed enough to answer civilly. “There’s nothing wrong with her. I just want a horse that’s less likely to attract notice.”