She ate two of the carefully wrapped boiled eggs as she rode, stopped at the stream to water herself and the horse, and continued on, letting her mount choose their speed. The horse seemed as content now to meander as Mora herself, and she managed to slip into a state of peace.
Enough time passed that Mora believed she’d chosen the wrong path and Rowan had continued north. Good that she could take care of herself, camp, hunt—though it would be a challenge with only sword and knife. A snare would do, or perhaps she could catch a fish. If not, she carried enough cheese and bread and wine to get her easily through tomorrow as well. So long as she pointed the horse’s nose in the same direction, there was no part of the White Forest more than three days ride across.
So unconcerned was Banna Mora that it was rather a surprise when the path widened into a meadow, and before her rose a huge limestone temple.
Pale walls climbed at least twenty feet, swarmed by dark green vines blossoming in white and gentle blue. The grass grew to her horse’s knees, but for a path around the entire building. Mora slid to the ground and followed the path. The horse wandered behind her, munching on the last summer grass. Mora didn’t care, though she ought to have.
This was the old star cathedral, protecting a navel well. She’d been here before as a very small child.
Four arms spread in each of the cardinal directions, and some of the heavy stones crumbled slightly. As she circled the cathedral, Mora squinted in the bright sun. High overhead the clouds that at dawn had been thick now striped the sky in sheer waves. Three violet butterflies danced a few feet above her head, bobbing in the tender breeze. They reminded her of her little brother, though she’d not seen him in years.
Mora’s body fell still and her heels seemed to stick to the ground. Her brother was caretaker here. Rowan had said so.
The Witch of the White Forest.
Hello, she whispered, and then took a deeper breath to push the phrase stronger.
The wind lifted, too, pressing grass against her knees with a whisper of its own.
There came a reply, clear in the language of trees. But Mora did not understand it. She marched back to the front of the cathedral, the south, where waited a thick wooden door carved with flowers and grinning earth saints and tiny birds. It stood half open.
“Hello?” she called in plain Learish. “I’m not fluent in tree tongue.” And Mora knew she spoke like an Aremore royal, despite her Learish birthright.
“Oh, hello!” came a hurried response. The voice sounded from above.
Mora backed up, bumping into her horse. The animal shifted against her fondly.
“I apologize,” the voice came again, as a young man walked easily along the top of the southeastern wall, a neckbreaking distance from the meadow floor. He was nearly naked, but for a loincloth draped loosely from his hips. He had curling brown hair, narrow shoulders, and bright tan skin. Mora could see no more against the brilliant blue-and-white sky. He said, “Most visitors here know the language of …”
The young man lifted a hand to shade his eyes. “Banna Mora?”
She put her hands on her hips. “Come down, Connley!” she snapped. “Carefully, before you …”
Mora trailed off, too, and they stared.
She wished she could see his face clearly.
After a long, still moment, Connley whispered in the language of trees, moving away, along the southeast wall at a much faster pace than Mora was comfortable with. The wall was two feet thick, but it wouldn’t matter if he tripped on a vine or some crumbling stone scattered beneath him. She followed him around the side.
When Connley reached the eastern arm of the cathedral, he followed its length and spoke again—it sounded like a gust of wind and sprinkling rain. But the tree nearest the wall bent, reaching a branch as thick as Mora’s leg out toward him, and Connley stepped onto it light as a bird. Mora thought her heart would stop.
He grasped another branch, then walked fast and sure down through the tree, until he reached the trunk and climbed the rest of the way like a human instead of a wild spirit.
Mora took a deep breath and waited for him to face her. First, her little brother touched his palm to the tree’s gray-brown bark and murmured, and only then did he turn.
As with her grandmother Sin, Mora had not seen Connley since she’d left for Aremoria. He’d been five. Only eight herself at the time, all her memories of him were distant and dreamy, memories in which their parents played full parts. Butterflies and singing wind, a mobile made of scarlet leaves, and quiet—she remembered best of all that he’d been ever so quiet as a child, unless he laughed. And always there was dirt on his face.
Just like there was now.
Two streaks of charcoal or thick gray paint had been carefully applied, beginning under his eyelids and pulling toward his jaw. The stark color brought out the green in his irises. She didn’t remember his eyes at all, but now he was grown, she recognized their Aremore father’s: light brown with rings of green in the center. Likely Connley did not know himself they were Corius March’s eyes. His skin was darker than she’d thought, though living nearly naked under the sun might account for that. He was slightly shorter than her, small seeming, but stout and hard muscled. Not a threat to her unless he was fast.
Except for the magic. If he was the Witch of the White Forest—already, so young—there was no telling what he could do. That tree had lifted him from the cathedral wall.
And evidence of that power was etched into his flesh. Hash-mark scars spoke voiceless spells against his skin, just under his left collarbone, in a line along the opposite hip, and in tiny rows down both inner forearms. A spiral had been scarred just over his navel. Around his neck hung a leather thong with three sleek, tawny feathers.
Mora had not the slightest idea what to say to him. Fortunately, Connley seemed to be suffering the same problem; he stared at her, too, expression lost.
They’d written sporadically as children, but she’d made less of an effort when Rovassos named her his heir, and when she’d led the pack of Lady Knights and everything in her life had been set and happy. It had hardly mattered to Mora, then, to be friendly with her Learish cousins. Her leash had been too tight, she realized now.
“Banna Mora,” he said again, and Mora was annoyed he’d found his voice first.
“Connley,” she replied.
“You, ah …” He glanced behind her, then to either side. “You’re alone? I was expecting …”
“Rowan? He moved too slow.” Mora gestured dismissively.
Connley nodded, then licked his bottom lip. “Do you want … are you thirsty? We can see to your horse. She’s tired.”
He didn’t move. Mora didn’t move. She felt she should say something profound. Embrace him. Find a memory to share. “I am. And you … Rowan doesn’t wear proper clothes, either.” She put the authority of a commander in her disapproval.
Once more, Connley glanced past her, clearly hopeful not to be alone with her very much longer.
Mora grunted and turned to her horse.
Connley had a small cottage built between two large ash trees a short walk from the cathedral. The ashes’ limbs wove together to form the skeleton of his roof, which had been thatched with lavender and smelled like paradise. As she unsaddled her horse and rubbed her down, Connley said softly, “You can let her loose. She’ll be safe to forage on her own here.”
“Is that what you do?” Mora asked.
Her brother nodded with a smile. “The forest provides. I have a garden, and gifts always from Hartfare and others who come to taste the navel waters.”
“You aren’t a star priest.”
“I leave that to Rowan, among others.”
“What were you doing on the wall?” Mora demanded.
“Sweet-talking the vines to let go some of their suckers on the east. The wall needs to last. One of the oaks has agreed to host that vine.” With that casual statement, he ducked barefoot into his cottage. Mora wasn’t sure if she should
follow.
She stood alone in the shade, wondering how she’d come to this, so off-balance, so unsure of her authority.
The White Forest murmured all around, delicate and merry.
Connley nudged his door back open and emerged, in trousers now and holding two clay cups. “Honey wine?”
Even knowing how quickly such sugary alcohol overwhelmed her, Mora eagerly accepted.
Together brother and sister settled on a log whose bark had been scraped away, and the wood polished to a cherry shine. The ends were carved with hash-marks.
The offered wine was clear and delicious, and Mora drank too fast. To her relief, her brother seemed content to sit quietly. A blue butterfly fluttered to them and landed on Connley’s knee. Mora stared at it; she could make out individual scales on its wings, which together were as large as her hand. It gently batted those wings and crawled a finger’s-length up Connley’s thigh. He put his hand there, and it hopped onto his knuckle.
Her brother lifted the butterfly nearer to his face, smiling at it.
That decided her: he was not of this world. Mora huffed—a laugh, a snort, she wasn’t even sure herself.
Connley took her amusement gracefully, and with his other hand pointed into the tree above them. She glanced up, startled, to see a small owl perched there, staring down at her with round yellow eyes.
In the middle of the day.
“She’s watching you,” Connley murmured.
It was a ghost owl, with a creamy, heart-shaped face and tiny white beak. Her shoulders were a light brown, tawnier as the wings tapered back. Speckles dripped down her belly, and her talons gripped the branch carefully, without gouging bark. Hello, Mora said in the language of trees.
The owl seemed to shrug.
Connley laughed prettily. “Birds aren’t always interested in talking.”
Glancing at her brother, Mora realized the feathers he wore down his chest were ghost owl feathers.
“Not hers,” Connley said, “but probably related.”
“You’re so odd,” Mora said, giving in to the urge to be blunt.
His smile faded and the cast of his expression turned almost grave. The blue butterfly lifted off his knuckle with a few lazy strokes of its wings. Shivering, Mora realized Connley suddenly seemed ageless. Wise, magical, an illusion cast by the forest itself, a projection of its spirit.
The dark turn of her thoughts disturbed her. She longed for the clean lines of civilized Lionis; cut glass and stone-carved flowers, cobbled roads and limestone arches linking the buildings. Manicured trees and blossoms that carefully spilled from window boxes.
“I was raised by the forest,” Connley said finally.
Guilt bit at her: she ought to have insisted he come to Aremoria with her, after their parents died and she had a place of her own. But he’d had Sin Errigal and all the Errigal cousins to keep him safe. She’d chosen her home.
Connley touched her wrist, so lightly she saw it more than felt it. “Don’t, sister. You were raised by a city. By libraries and warriors and a king. I wasn’t unhappy. I’m not. This is my cradle, this island.”
It was too intimate for having known each other again a mere hour. She withdrew her hand and glanced back at the ghost owl. The moment she met the bird’s gaze, the owl spread her wings and leapt off the branch: not a whisper in the wind as it skimmed over their heads, dipped up and over the cottage, and vanished.
Mora felt oddly alone.
Then: singing.
The wind pushed her hair off her ears and delivered a low, distorted song.
She knew Rowan Lear’s voice, but also that he was some miles away still.
A succession of shivers pulled down her spine and Mora finished the cup of mead.
But Connley’s face lit with unadulterated relief. “Rowan,” he said, pushing to his feet. “I’ll—I’ll meet him.”
And then Mora was truly alone with the forest, the wind, and her discomfiting uncertainty.
STARS DAZZLED IN the black sky when Mora woke.
The men had attempted to give her the narrow cottage bed, but she’d rolled her eyes and spread her blanket upon the ground outside. So thick was the grass her sleep was immediate and comfortable, much better than most camping she’d experienced as a soldier. The hot mushroom soup and honey wine in her belly helped, assuredly.
Silence—utter silence—greeted her waking. Instead of rich and peaceful, the midnight forest felt oppressive. Wrong.
Mora held her breath and kept very still, but there was nothing: no night frogs or whispering breeze, no shivering plants or crickets or concealed hunters. She could hear the beat of her heart.
On her feet fast, Mora quietly loosed the knife from her shin sheath and gripped it backward, holding it close before her like shield and weapon both. Rowan was not on his bedroll. Sneaking carefully on her toes, she went to the cottage door: it opened easily, and inside was dark. “Rowan? Connley?” she whispered. Nothing.
She felt her way to the window and unlatched the shutters: starlight filtered through, but it was scant. Mora peered at the small room. The bed was empty, that was certain, and she saw no sign of either her brother or of struggle. He and Rowan had both left her alone by their own choice.
Anger spurred her outside and down the path to the cathedral. Her knife remained in hand and she maintained her quiet movement, aware danger might still be present, though doubting it.
The cathedral shone dully against the night sky, and it was barely brighter in the meadow, without trees to block the stars. She stormed to the south to find the door open enough to walk through, so she did.
Mora stopped. Starlight fell down from the open sky—there was no roof at all, as was the case with most such cathedrals, even the one in Lionis. The dark sanctuary opened before her. Its limewashed walls had been painted with black constellations and bright flower-bursts of red, blue, yellow that she could just barely make out.
The prince and the witch were at the heart of the cathedral, where all four arms came together in a cross, with the navel well in its center. Rowan leaned his hands on the stone rim, peering down into it; his white-gold hair spilled free, falling against the well and even into it, being so very long. Across from him Connley touched the well, too, but his head was tipped back to the stars above.
One of them was speaking softly, or was it a song?
As Banna Mora stared, she heard another noise: water. A gurgle, growing louder but still only like the murmur of a slow stream.
Then Rowan leaned back. Water appeared like a black, rippling mirror of the sky, rising to the edge of the well. Mora’s lips parted in surprise. The water halted, the surface dancing calmly there, licking at the ends of Rowan’s hair and the tips of his fingers.
Connley dipped his hand into the water, and brought it, dripping, to his mouth.
“I hope this will clarify my prophecies,” Rowan murmured.
“You still argue with the stars?”
“Everyone does who converses with them—their voice is a growing babble.”
Though Mora was certain she’d made no sound, Rowan’s head snapped toward her. Connley followed his gaze.
“Banna Mora,” Rowan said tenderly. He beckoned for her. “Come taste the rootwater of Innis Lear.”
She stared at the black eye of water pressing up from the well. It pulsed, and though she’d never admit it to any but herself, she’d have sworn it was the same rhythm as her heartbeat.
“No,” she said, and backed away, eyes stuck to that water until her reaching hand found the corner of the threshold and she stepped out through the narrow opening, into the meadow again. Her heel caught on loose earth and grass scratched at her boots.
Mora breathed a gasping, deep breath, then went determinedly back to her bed.
HOTSPUR
Lionis, autumn
SHE KNOCKED ON the door of the prince’s chambers.
Hal’s chambers.
Nerves danced in Hotspur’s stomach, making her bounce on
her toes. Usually anxiety and anticipation mingled in her blood to better settle it, readying her for battle. But this was no enemy she prepared to face, and there was no way to win.
The door opened, and one of Hal’s footmen greeted her with a bright smile. Hotspur entered and asked softly if she might be left alone with Prince Hal. Perio bowed, slipped out, and pulled the door shut behind him.
Hal’s people knew she loved nothing better than to be alone with Hotspur.
The narrow arched door to the bedroom was held open by an iron poker that streaked ash across the marble floor.
“Come in!” Hal replied, voice echoing from the dim depths of the bedroom.
Hotspur remained in the study, holding on to the hilt of her sheathed sword. She was dressed for travel in thick wool pants, orange gambeson, and both her sword belt and tooled Perseria belt with pouches for keys and money and loops for her gauntlets. Over it all she had her brand-new green-and-black leather coat, embossed across the back with a united crest of both Perseria and Mercia. It had arrived yesterday with Vindomata’s letter, and Hotspur had finally put it on just before coming here.
After a fraught moment trying not to pace or call out again, Hotspur’s waiting ended. Hal appeared, laughing and shaking her head. “I’ll come to you then, great heart.” She ducked through the passage, still smiling, and Hotspur caught her breath.
Hal wore a new dress.
The skirt was split and only as long as her midcalves, and loosely laced around her torso, clearly so she might still fight in it, kick high or mount a horse, and run without the detrimental effects of a stiff bodice. But still, it was a dress. The brown-ribbon collar dipped low to reveal the elegant line of her collarbone, enough that Hotspur could step forward and put her lips to the high, soft mound of her breasts.
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