Pillars of the World

by Anne Bishop

  “Falco!” Hurrying toward her quarry, Dianna ignored the startled looks of the other men standing with the Lord of the Hawks. She also ignored Falco’s protest when she grabbed his arm and pulled him out of the room.

  “Dianna! Is something wrong?”

  “Yes. No. Not exactly.” She’d thought this over on the ride home. Her gift would be enjoyed more if there was a way to feed it, and there was something she could do about that. “I want you to catch a rabbit.”

  Falco started to reply, then changed his mind — twice. “You want me to catch a rabbit,” he finally repeated.

  He was acting like it was an odd request — which it was, but that was beside the point. “Yes.”

  Falco smiled hesitantly, as if he would be willing to share the joke, even one at his expense, if she would just explain it to him.

  “I want you to go down to the human world, shift to your other form, catch a rabbit, and take it to the cottage near the sea.” When he still hesitated, she snapped, “Why is this so difficult? You like catching rabbits. You’ve said so.”

  “That’s the witch’s cottage,” Falco said carefully. “The one the Lightbringer warned me to stay away from.”

  “And now, I, the Huntress, am giving you a new command.”

  “Why?” Falco asked, sounding a little frightened. “If I’m going to have his wrath come down on me, at least tell me why.”

  Dianna winced. She had hoped she wouldn’t have to reveal that much. “I gave her a puppy.”

  “You —” Falco’s mouth fell open. “You gave the witch a shadow hound?”

  “It was one of the mongrels, of no value to us,” Dianna said testily. “Not really a shadow hound at all.”

  “But —”

  Chaining her own agitated feelings, Dianna rested her hands on Falco’s shoulders, as much to give comfort as to keep him from bolting — possibly straight to Lucian.

  “Falco, Aiden feels certain that the witches are involved in some way with what’s happening to Tir Alainn. This one is young, and not against us.” At least, she hoped not. “If we are her friends, she won’t want to do us harm. She might even be able to help us understand what is happening, might even be able to help us stop it. The puppy needs to be fed, so she needs the extra meat.” She studied his eyes and realized Lucian’s temper wasn’t the only reason he was wary of approaching the cottage. “You don’t have to stay. Just leave the rabbit where it can be found easily.”

  “All right.” He stepped back, bowed to indicate this was a formal discussion, then quickly walked away.

  “Falco!” Dianna called before he turned a corner. “It might be best not to mention this to anyone for the time being.”

  He gave her a measuring look, the same look she imagined was in a man’s eyes when he was ordered into a battle he knew he couldn’t win.

  “Huntress, there is no one I want to mention this to.”

  Yap. Yap yap yap.

  Ari looked at the cow shed guiltily. She’d never had a puppy before, but it had only taken a few minutes to convince her that puppies and young gardens weren’t a good match. Since she didn’t want to let him out on his own until he got used to his new home, she’d spent a few minutes running around the meadow with him to tire him out, then put him in the cow shed with a pan of fresh water. She’d have to ask Neall if he had any ideas about how to teach a puppy not to squat in the house.

  Yap. Yap yap yap.

  A couple more chores, then she’d let him out and find something for both of them to eat for the midday —

  “AAIIIEEEEE!”

  Ari raced to the cow shed, pulled open the door, and just stood there, not certain if the puppy or the small man clinging to the top rail of the stall would be more offended if she laughed.

  “Don’t just stand there!” the small man shouted. “Get an ax and defend yourself!”

  Oh dear.

  Ari grabbed the puppy and held the indignant bundle of fur close. For something so small and young, he was certainly a fierce little creature.

  “It’s all right,” Ari said.

  Yap yap. Grrr.

  “All right?” the small man shrieked. “I come in here to get a bit of rest and find this hulking great beast ready to tear off my limbs, and you think it’s all right?”

  “Hush!” Ari said to the puppy.

  After one more yap, the puppy hushed. The small man glared.

  “He’s just a puppy,” Ari said soothingly. “You probably startled him as much as he startled you.”

  “Not likely since he’s got a meaner set of teeth.”

  “He’s a puppy.”

  The small man made himself more comfortable on the top rail. “Puppy,” he said ominously. “You mean to say that hulking beast is going to get bigger? How much bigger?”

  “I don’t know. But he’s bound to get a little bigger than he is now.”

  The small man looked at the puppy. His eyes narrowed. “A stray you found in the woods, was he?”

  “No, a … friend … gave him to me.”

  “Friend.”

  “Yes, she —” Startled by a hawk’s cry, Ari turned toward the door. She heard the small man scramble down the stall rails, felt him brush against her legs as he cautiously peered out of the door.

  “You’ve got company,” he said in an odd voice.

  A hawk stood on the chopping block, a rabbit held securely in one taloned foot. He watched them in a way that made Ari uneasy.

  “Do you suppose some of the gentry are out hunting, and one of their hawks strayed too far into Brightwood?”

  “No jesses,” the small man said. “That one belongs to no one but himself.”

  “Why would a wild hawk bring his kill so close to a cottage?”

  “That’s something you’ll have to ask him.” The small man paused. “Best to leave the hulking wee beast here. No use having him killed before you have a chance to be annoyed with him.”

  “But …” Ari looked at the hawk. “Surely it would just fly away if the puppy ran after it.”

  “If it was only a hawk, it might do just that.”

  A chill ran through her. It deepened when she saw the small man pull a sling and a couple of stones from his pockets. The Small Folk were as skilled at hunting with slings as they were with bows.

  “You’d best go out and see what the Fae Lord wants. The sooner his business here is finished, the sooner he’ll be gone.”

  “Fae? If he’s … If he knows … Surely he can’t mean me harm. I mean, the Fae Lord I’ve met was friendly.” More than friendly. Just remembering Lucian’s kisses made her knees weak. Or, perhaps, it was remembering his anger the last time she saw him that was producing that effect.

  “Oh, they’re always friendly when they get what they want. It’s when they don’t that you have to take care. The Fair Folk have a streak of meanness in them. They have that in common with humans.” His smile was grim and malicious. “Go on out now. I’ll see you come to no harm.”

  Setting the puppy down and hoping he would understand somehow what stay meant, she wiped her suddenly sweaty hands on her tunic and walked slowly toward the chopping block.

  “Blessings of the day to you, brother hawk.”

  The hawk stared at her, looked down at the rabbit, then back at her.

  “That’s a fine rabbit you have.”

  The hawk ruffled its feathers. Waited.

  What was it waiting for? Ari wondered. If this was a Fae Lord, what did he expect of her? He couldn’t … Oh, Mother’s mercy, he couldn’t think she would open her arms to any of them simply because Lucian had been her lover. Could he?

  After a long pause, when neither of them moved, the hawk released the rabbit. Waited.

  “You brought the rabbit for me?” Ari asked. Why would he do that? Not that the meat wouldn’t be welcome, especially with the pup.

  Moving slowly, stretching her arm as far as she could to keep her face away from the beak and talons, Ari’s hand gripped the rabbit. She ste
pped back, still holding the rabbit out, ready to drop it if the hawk seemed angry.

  It just watched her.

  Finally, when it lifted its wings, Ari said, “You did the work, so you should have part of the bounty. Wait a moment, if you please.”

  Hurrying into the kitchen, she pulled the largest knife she owned from the wood block, put the rabbit in the kitchen basin, and cut off a hind leg. Grabbing a towel to hold under the leg and catch the blood, she went back out and set the leg on the chopping block.

  She almost thought she saw surprise in the hawk’s eyes.

  “Thank you for the rabbit.”

  Another pause. Then the hawk sank its talons into the rabbit leg and flew off.

  Ari sank to the ground, her legs suddenly feeling too watery to hold her up.

  The puppy barreled out of the cow shed, yapping frantically.

  She looked at the small man walking toward her and wondered what magic he had used to keep the pup quiet and contained.

  “You did well, Mistress Ari,” the small man said.

  “It could have been just a hawk.”

  “And I could be a giant.” His expression was grim. “This friend who gave you the pup. What’s she look like?”

  “She’s fair-haired, has light brown eyes, and,” Ari added, attempting to smile, “she’s fairly useless in the garden. I thought even gentry ladies knew plants wouldn’t bloom in a handful of days. She does have some fine horses, though. Especially the gray mare she was riding this morning.”

  “She rides a pale mare.”

  Puzzled at the odd phrasing, Ari said, “Yes. At least she did today. Do you know her?”

  “I’ve seen her.” He didn’t seem pleased about that.

  As if it knew who they were talking about, the puppy whined and climbed into Ari’s lap.

  “I’d best be about my business,” the small man said. “Take care, Mistress Ari.”

  Ari watched him walk across the meadow. Despite watching, she lost sight of him long before he reached the woods. But that was the way with the Small Folk. They were never seen unless they chose to be seen.

  Had he been right about the hawk? Had it been a Fae Lord? Why would any Fae be showing themselves now? They’d never done so before. At least not that she could recall. Was it just curiosity because Lucian had been with her, and his presence here had been taken by some of the others as tacit permission to make her aware of them? Or was it something more? And if it was more, what did they suddenly want from her?

  And what hadn’t the small man said about the pup and Dianna?

  Sighing, Ari rubbed her nose against the puppy’s head. “Come on. There’s a rabbit waiting for us. A stew for me and meat for you. And while the stew is cooking, we have an important task — finding the right name for you.”

  Neall leaned over, cupped his hands under the spill of water, and drank. The last handful he splashed over his face.

  They could use a soft, soaking rain. The streams and creeks were already running a bit low, and crops weren’t growing as well as they should. To make things worse, the tenant farmers had chosen yesterday, when he’d been with Ari, to bring their complaints and concerns to Baron Felston’s bailiff. The bailiff, in turn, had brought them to the baron’s attention. And Felston had blamed Neall’s “sloth” for fewer acres being planted and the lack of rain to help what was planted grow.

  How many times had he told Baron Felston that people would not starve through the winter in order to plant full acres in the spring when the reward for the hunger and hard work was to have more of it taken in tithes. Being blamed, again, for the problems caused by Felston’s greed was the last wound in a lifetime of such wounds. Today, while riding to all the tenant farms to verify the complaints — as if he needed to do again what he’d been doing since the spring — he was trying to decide if he was going to head west to his mother’s land and come back later for Ari, or if he was going to try to find a place nearby where he could stay and work while she considered whether she was going with him or staying at Brightwood.

  He filled his canteen and stepped away from the creek. “Come on,” he told Darcy. “Let’s get this finished.”

  A round stone hit his boot hard enough to sting.

  He scanned the strip of woods that separated a couple of fields. Saw nothing.

  “You would be wise to look to Brightwood, young Lord,” said a gruff voice.

  Nothing more. There was no use searching. There would be nothing to see, no one to find.

  Neall threw himself into the saddle. The Small Folk didn’t give idle warnings, which meant something had happened that they wanted him to know about.

  “Brightwood,” he said, letting the gelding choose its own speed. If Felston punished him for shirking his duties, so be it. What the baron wanted wasn’t worth a pebble compared to Ari.

  When he and Darcy reached the cottage, they were both sweating heavily from the hard, fast run.

  “Ari!” Neall kicked out of the stirrups and leaped out of the saddle in a way that would probably get him killed with any other horse.

  What could be wrong here? Had something happened to her? The only weapon he had was his work knife, and that wasn’t going to help much. He drew it out of the sheath in his boot and promised himself that he wouldn’t go out again without at least a bow and quiver.

  “Neall?”

  Her voice was faint. He turned, trying to catch the direction. The gelding figured it out faster and ambled toward the privy that stood a few feet from the cow shed.

  Neall ran to the privy, reached for the door — and had enough sense left to hesitate. “Ari?”

  “Neall?” she squeaked.

  “Yes, it’s Neall.”

  “Go away.”

  “Damn it, I will not go away!” He reached for the door again.

  “Neall … go stand by the well for a minute or two. Please.”

  Starting to feel foolish, and angry because he did, he turned and strode to the well. “Walk,” he told Darcy. “Go on, take a bit of a walk around the meadow to cool down. Then you can have some water.”

  Darcy snorted, looked at the privy, then began an easy walk around the meadow.

  Neall watched for a few seconds to make sure the gelding would walk and not start to graze. May the Mother bless Ahern. He didn’t know how the man managed to raise horses that had more brains than any others, but he was grateful the old man had been willing to sell the gelding to him.

  Filling a bucket from the well, he stripped off his sweaty shirt, then used the dipper Ari kept on a hook to pour water over himself.

  A bit of maliciousness? Was that all the warning had been?

  Darcy paused, snuffled something in the grass, then shied and trotted back toward him.

  Neall saw a gray body with black streaks rise out of the grass and felt his heart trip.

  Yap. Yap yap yap.

  The puppy raced toward him. The breath he’d been holding came out in a rush of relief when he saw the tan front legs.

  A few feet away from him, the puppy tripped over its feet and somersaulted until it ended up nose to toes with his boot. It yapped fiercely at his boot until Darcy, curious now, came up behind it and snorted on its tail.

  Yipping, the puppy tucked its tail between its legs and ran for the privy. Ari came out, picked up the puppy, and headed toward the well. She looked frustrated and annoyed — until she noticed that the gelding was lathered. Then worry filled her eyes.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  Feeling too many things that weren’t comfortable, Neall splashed his face with water before replying. “You tell me.”

  “So,” Ari said quietly after a long pause. “It bothered him that much.”

  Neall straightened slowly, wiping the water off his face. “Who?”

  Ari hesitated. “One of the Small Folk was here when the hawk came. It brought a rabbit, and he” — she put a slight emphasis on the word to indicate the small man — “said the hawk was a Fae Lord
.”

  Neall’s chest tightened. “A Fae Lord brought you a rabbit. Did he say why?”

  “He was in the form of a hawk, Neall. There wasn’t any conversation.”

  “That doesn’t explain —” Something shivered through him, making him hope he was wrong. He’d known the man who had claimed Ari at the Summer Moon wasn’t local gentry, but he’d wondered if the lover might have been a well-to-do merchant who was staying in the area for a while. Now he had to consider that the man might have been one of the Fae. He, better than anyone, knew such meetings and matings were possible. “The … gentleman … you gave the fancy to. Could that have been him?”

  “No.”

  “Ari, if he didn’t tell you he was Fae —”

  “It wasn’t him. That’s not his other form.”

  Neall leaned against the well, staggered. So she had known her lover was a Fae Lord. Not a man who had stayed in the area awhile and gone away, but someone who might still be around — and still be interested in Ari.

  “There must be a Clan nearby,” he said quietly. “The roads through the Veil are always connected to the Old Places. So there must be a road that leads to Brightwood.”

  “How do you know those roads connect to the Old Places? None of the stories are that specific about where the shining roads are. And if that’s true, why hasn’t anyone around here seen them until now?”

  Because they hadn’t wanted to be seen. Neall shook his head. This wasn’t the time to tell her he’d seen the Wild Hunt come out of the woods beyond the meadow. But he could tell her the other reason why he knew. “A friend of my mother’s told me that when I was a small boy.” He hesitated, gathered his courage, and wondered if he’d lost her before he’d tried to win her. “Do you know who he was? The one who …” He couldn’t say it.

  She didn’t answer for a long time. Finally, “The Lightbringer.”

  “Mother’s mercy.”

  “He was kind, Neall … and now it’s done.”

  “Are you sure?” Was a rabbit any different from a salmon as a wooing gift?