by Anne Bishop
There was power around that cottage, and it was strong. But it came from the Old Place, from the Great Mother. She had sensed no magic in the girl—had sensed nothing that might harm or alarm.
Still, if Lucian decided to continue visiting the cottage and the girl for the full time allowed him by the fancy, it wouldn’t hurt to make a return visit herself.
Sunset.
Ari opened the top half of the kitchen door and looked at the meadow that gently rolled to the trees that marked the beginning of Brightwood’s forest.
She brushed her hand over her best tunic and skirt, smoothing out nonexistent wrinkles.
Would he come? Did she want him to?
The thought of him and what he’d done with her in bed last night made her feel fluttery inside and produced a soft ache between her legs. She wanted to feel that way again, wanted to feel him again. But . . . Was that enough?
Of course it was. What more could she want or expect from a man who had come into her life so suddenly and would be gone again in a few days’ time?
But what was she supposed to do for those few days?
Looking over her shoulder at the stew simmering on the stove, she winced.
What was she going to feed him after tonight? There was barely enough stew left for the evening meal, and nothing for tomorrow. She could just walk across the meadow and wait for him in the woods. If he took his pleasure there, he wouldn’t expect hospitality as well, would he? Wouldn’t he simply enjoy himself for an hour and then be on his way?
He might. He could. The stories her mother and grandmother had spun by the fire while they also spun the wool had been a pleasant way for a child to absorb the lessons about dealing with the Fair Ones, but they hadn’t told stories about the more . . . earthy . . . subjects. If they had lived, would they have sat by the fire last winter and told her tales that would have helped her now? Perhaps.
The truth was she couldn’t open the door and walk across the meadow. She couldn’t offer to lift her skirt for him while he pulled her to the ground. That felt too much like her experience with Royce.
“You can’t change the turn of the seasons,” she said quietly. “You can’t lay the bounty of the harvest on the table while you’re still planting the seeds from which that bounty will grow. Offer what you can, and let that be enough.”
Turning away from the door, she stirred the stew, wondering if she should put it on the back of the stove just to warm. When she turned to look out the door again, she saw him, a black horse silently galloping over the meadow.
He slowed to a trot, turned away from the cottage in the direction of the cow shed.
Ari stayed by the door and waited.
A few moments later, Lucian came around the side of the cottage, his hair tousled, his modestly ruffled shirt open to the waist.
“You came back,” Ari said. “Come in and be welcome.”
He reached over the half door, captured her face in his hands, and kissed her long and slow and deep. When he finally raised his head, he said, “Yes, I came back.”
Propped on one elbow, Lucian watched Ari sleep.
She hadn’t been as delighted with her gift as he’d expected her to be. She’d stumbled over her thanks and seemed a bit . . . embarrassed . . . to be thanking him at all. His disappointment in her response had a familiar taste. Wasn’t that why he had found it so easy to abstain for so long?
Perhaps she’d expected a traditional gift after all. He had one with him, a small jade pendant that was appropriate for a first or second gifting. He would put it on the dressing table before he left in the morning. She didn’t have enough artifice to tie up her thanks in pretty lies, and he didn’t need a woman’s tepid pleasure in a gift spoiling his pleasure of the bed.
Even there . . . Oh, she’d been warm enough, eager enough, desperate enough for the mating by the time he’d decided to mount her. He hadn’t been as kind as he should have been to a woman who had so little experience, but it had annoyed him that she had wanted to fuss with the pot on the stove instead of going straight to bed with him. If it had burned, what difference did it make? There was more. But no. She’d fussed long enough to have him simmering with another kind of heat, and he’d let a bit of his temper burn itself out in the bed along with his lust. Not enough to hurt her, but enough that she wouldn’t dismiss him so casually again.
I shouldn’t have brought anger to the bed. He pushed the thought away, along with the shimmer of guilt the thought produced. He had no reason to feel guilty. She had given herself to him for this measure of days, hadn’t she? She was human; he was the Lightbringer. She should be honored to have him in her bed.
She woke, stirred, looked at him with eyes that were a little fearful. “Are you hungry?” she asked hesitantly.
Her fear scraped at him, added chains to the guilt. But not enough to outweigh the heat in his loins.
He mounted her, sank into her, kissed her in a way that would build the warmth to a slow burn and extinguish the fear. “Yes, I’m hungry.”
Chapter Twelve
Adolfo stared at Harro, his nephew Konrad’s Assistant Inquisitor. The Master Inquisitor’s brown eyes revealed nothing, but there was a storm of rage growing inside him trapped behind a wall of shock. It wouldn’t stay trapped for long. He could feel it pushing, looking for a weak spot in the wall from which to burst free.
With cold deliberation, Adolfo locked the feeling of shock behind a prison of self-control. The storm of rage would have a target, but not here, not yet.
“Where did this happen?” he asked in a voice stripped of emotion. “How did this happen?”
“It was my fault—” Harro said, tears filling his eyes.
Yes, and you will pay for it.
“—but I was his Assistant, and I obeyed his orders.” Harro hesitated. “He was young, Master Adolfo, and . . . sometimes . . . too dedicated.”
In other words, Konrad had indulged himself too much while extracting the last confession. Fool of a boy! How many times had he been told that even an animal that appears defenseless will bite if cornered?
“What happened?” Adolfo said, keeping his voice soft and his body still.
“There was only one witch, as we’d been told, but she was stronger than the others we had encountered while doing our great work here in Sylvalan.”
I know the rhetoric, old man, Adolfo thought impatiently. I created it.
“She could draw power from earth, fire, and water. So Konrad felt he had to be more persuasive with this one. But . . . I know pain is the only way to cleanse witches of what they are. With this one, I could see it wasn’t breaking her down as it should have but giving her a kind of mad strength to resist. When I tried to tell Konrad what I saw in her eyes, he became angry. He ordered me to go on to Norville to inform the baron there that he would be arriving in a day or two.” Harro’s eyes pleaded. “I couldn’t disobey.”
Adolfo just waited.
“She escaped. I don’t know how, but she got away from him. He gathered men from the village and tenant farms and went after her.”
At least Konrad had had sense enough not to hunt alone for a witch who probably no longer cared about the creed most of her kind lived by.
“The men caught up with her in a meadow that bordered the Old Place there,” Harro continued, his voice breaking. “As they attacked her, a woman on a dark horse rode out of the trees.”
Adolfo frowned. “Another witch?”
Harro shook his head. “The village men said it was Death’s Mistress. They said it was the Gatherer.”
The spot in his back that always chilled when fear raised its head turned icy cold. “One of the Fae,” he said in a barely audible voice. “Nothing had been said about Fae frequenting the Old Place.”
“They come around now and again, but the villagers swore the Fae rarely bothered themselves with human concerns.”
“This one did,” Adolfo snapped, his control cracking enough to let a little of the rage gush through him.
Harro wrung his hands. “It was the Gatherer, Master Adolfo.” He closed his eyes. “She killed Konrad, and the other men ran away.”
Young fool. The Fae were no longer as strong as most people thought, and it was easy enough to thwart one of them if you knew what gift of magic that particular one commanded. But the one who was called the Gatherer had to be avoided because her gift . . .
“She killed him because of a witch,” Adolfo said heavily.
Harro opened his eyes. Tears filled them. “Yes.”
“And no doubt took his spirit to the horror that awaits men’s souls in the Evil One’s Fiery Pit.”
Harro shook his head. “I don’t have much of the Inquisitor’s Gift, but even the villagers who have none could see . . .” His voice trailed away.
“See what?” Adolfo demanded. That icy spot in his back grew and grew.
“Konrad’s ghost,” Harro whispered. “She left him there, in the meadow.”
Adolfo sank back in his chair. The rage inside him pounded against his self-control.
“The village men came back, intending to retrieve the body and give Konrad a proper mourning and burial. But when they saw the ghost, they were afraid he might be able to follow and haunt the village so they—” It took effort for Harro to swallow. “They buried him in the meadow to bind his ghost there.”
Adolfo covered his face with his hands.
“I am sorry, Master Adolfo,” Harro said hoarsely. “Konrad was a fine man and a skilled Inquisitor. He will be missed.”
As Adolfo lowered his hands and rose from his chair, the power swelled inside him, fed by the rage smashing through his self-control. Fortunately, the means to relieve the pressure inside him—and salvage this disaster—was standing before him.
Adolfo placed his hands on Harro’s shoulders. The power that flowed through his hands flooded the weaker man so fast Harro barely had time to realize what was happening.
“You will return to the village,” Adolfo said, his voice soft as his power of persuasion ensnared Harro, leaving the man vulnerable—and obedient—to whatever was said. “You will stay at the inn, not at the baron’s estate. You will tell the villagers that it was not Death’s Mistress but the Evil One in disguise who attacked the men when they attempted to cleanse their village of the witch’s foul influence. It was the Evil One who killed Konrad.”
“The Evil One,” Harro mumbled.
“You will tell them you believe that the Evil One is still nearby, waiting to devour other good folk as it devoured Konrad, and you have returned to keep watch until I, the Master Inquisitor, can arrive and free them.”
Harro’s eyes were blank and glassy now. Perfect.
“The second night you are at the inn, you will retire immediately after the evening meal, and you will sit before the fire in your room. You will watch the fire carefully. When it has burned down to embers, you will take an ember the size of your thumb from tip to the first joint. You will place this ember on your tongue. You will make no sound, no sound at all. When the ember has burned out, you will spit it out on the hearth and take another, smaller ember. You will swallow this ember. You will make no sound, no sound at all. You will continue to swallow embers until you can swallow no more. Do you understand?”
“Un . . . der . . . stand.”
“You will remember reporting to me about Konrad’s death. You will remember that you confessed that you had failed him, and that, when you asked my forgiveness, it was freely given. You will remember that we grieved together for the loss of a fine young man. That is all you will remember, but you will follow my instructions exactly as I have told you.”
“Will . . . follow.”
“Good. That is good.”
Adolfo stepped back, returned to his chair. He carefully released most of the power that now ensnared Harro, leaving just enough to ensure his will would be obeyed but not so much that Harro would notice it.
He waited until Harro blinked, drew in a deep breath, then looked around as if slightly bewildered.
“I thank you for bringing me the news yourself, Harro,” Adolfo said quietly. “Please leave me now. I need to be alone with my thoughts—and you must prepare for your journey.”
“Journey?” Harro appeared to be thinking hard. Then his face cleared. “Yes, the journey. I must return to the villagers and keep watch. Even in grief, the great work must go on.”
“Yes, it must.”
Adolfo didn’t move until Harro left the room. Then he rose and stood before the hearth. He stared at the fire for a minute before releasing one little burst of power. The fire roared, the flames leaping twice as high as they had a moment before. After a count of ten, they shrank back to normal size.
Adolfo still stared at the flames.
Perhaps it was for the best. Even before they had come to Sylvalan, Konrad had begun showing signs of being a bit too much like his grandmother. The day would have come when Konrad no longer saw him as the uncle who had guided and trained him but as a rival for the title of Master Inquisitor.
He had been fond of his nephew. After all, the boy was the only close family he had left. But he wouldn’t have tolerated the boy as a rival. He wouldn’t tolerate anyone having command over him ever again. So, perhaps, it was for the best that Konrad had died this way. Still, the villagers had to pay for allowing the Gatherer to kill an Inquisitor.
The last of his family. Oh, there were other relatives—after all, his father had had two older brothers—but it had been so long since he had seen them, he no longer thought of them as family. Nor did he consider his wife in that way. She was just a flawed vessel that had never been able to properly grow his seed.
No, women were not family. They were like the cow that gave milk or the hens that laid eggs. They were a necessary part of a man’s life for his comfort and well being, but they should never be thought of as being more valuable than the cow or the hen. Their purpose was to open their legs for a man’s pleasure and to birth the children who would be his heirs.
If his father had understood that, the old man might still be alive.
His father had been a younger son who would inherit no property, his mother a beautiful woman who owned a substantial piece of land. He suspected his father had married as much for the land as to satisfy lust, and must have been cruelly disappointed when he discovered that the land wasn’t signed over to him but remained in his new wife’s control. Still, she had done what she had promised. Whole sections of the forest were cut down and the timber sold. Virgin meadows felt the bite of a plow for the first time, and tenant farmers planted tame crops. The wealth they harvested from the land surpassed what the rest of his family could claim, and he had been well pleased.
But his father never forgot that she had kept the land in her own name, and he never forgot that his own pleasures were dependent on how well he pleased her.
Despite that, they had been happy together—until the day when his mother had complained that her bedroom was cold and he, their first-born son and barely six years old, performed the trick he’d just learned and lit the fire for her. He clearly remembered the blank way she had stared at him, and how pale her face had become.
The vicious arguments had started after that. Accusations and denials. His father had lied to her by omission, had failed to admit that there had been a foul union between Fae and human somewhere in his bloodline. The son must have inherited this perverse magical power from the father because her bloodline was pure.
I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was wrong.
You’ll not shame me with these tricks that make your mother doubt me. I’ll not be a penniless younger son again because of the likes of you. If I have to beat this mischief out of you, then that’s what I’ll do.
Yes, her bloodline had been pure in that she was a witch who was descended from witches as far back as her family could remember. But she had never mentioned that when she’d let that younger son woo and win her. She never mentioned it at all.
But that was something that Adolfo didn’t realize until much later, after he’d been disinherited in favor of a younger brother who had shown no signs of impurity, after he’d run away and had learned, haltingly, to use the power that had destroyed his childhood.
That first display of magical power had been the beginning of his mother’s hatred for him, and that hatred had changed a warm, happy home into a pit of horrors for a child who couldn’t understand what he’d done wrong and didn’t have the self-control to deny something inside him that felt so natural.
He had suffered the beatings, the humiliations. He had learned a great deal from the walking evil his father had become in an effort to placate a wife who hated.
At fourteen, he ran away and lived from hand to mouth for several months before he found his calling. It was in a village that had experienced several incidents of bad luck. Milk going sour within hours of being taken from the cow. Chickens on several farms producing two-headed chicks. Wagon wheels breaking on the way to market. Fields that would begin to grow, only to wither when it was too late to plant again in time to harvest.
At first, he sensed the magic as a feeling of something familiar and frightening. After being in the village for a few days, doing whatever work he could to earn a meal, he saw the woman. He saw the easy way she greeted and spoke with the other villagers. He saw the wariness in the eyes of one handsome man. And he saw her eyes when that same man met another young woman outside a shop.
A couple of days later, when a riding party was taking a cross-country run, the young woman’s horse stumbled for no apparent reason and went down. The fall crippled the young woman in ways that would make a young man look elsewhere for a wife.
That was when he realized what it was about that woman that had troubled him.
She had felt like his mother. And there had been that same shuttered look in her eyes that his mother had had whenever someone’s luck had turned bad.