by Anne Bishop
He went to the young woman’s family and told them he believed that the accident had been caused by the witch living nearby. And he told them he had some small skill in gaining a confession from such creatures.
They had doubted his professed skill, with good reason, and they had doubted his assurance that the woman they knew was a witch. But they had a crippled daughter, and they were hurting.
The confrontation had taken place on the village’s main street. It had been a foolish thing to do, and had almost cost him his life. He had stood in the main street and hurled the accusations at her, listing every one of the ills that had beset the villagers. Her only response had been a mocking smile—until he loudly declared that the reason no decent man would have her was because she fornicated with the Evil One and the stench of the vile union clung to her.
She flung her earth magic at him, opening up the street right under his feet. He threw himself away from the deep pit, landing hard enough to knock the air from his lungs. A moment later, the pit snapped shut. If he’d fallen into it, she would have buried him alive.
One of the villagers hit her over the head with his walking stick before she could strike again. Then they had looked to him to tell them what to do with this enemy. And he had the answer: Burn her.
With his help, how those flames did burn.
He spent two days at the inn there, his food and lodging courtesy of the family whose daughter had been crippled.
When he was ready to move on, one of the farmers mentioned a cousin who was having a bit of trouble, and if Master Adolfo was heading that way, would he mind having a look to see if he could sense if a witch was causing the trouble.
Of course he could head that way. And of course he found a witch. It didn’t matter that the troubles had no other cause than nature’s whims, there was a witch living quietly in the village. She, too, burned.
In each place, there was always someone who knew someone else who was having a bit of trouble that might be caused by magic. And if he arrived at a village where there was no trouble, it wasn’t difficult to create some. He didn’t have any of the earth magics except for a bit of fire, but he had the gift of persuasion, which made him suspect that his mother had had Fae blood in her as well as witch, since the magic to open a door into another mind was something that belonged to the Fae. So it wasn’t difficult to slip around the borders of one of the Old Places and turn the minds of a few of the Small Folk to mischief magic. He would leave and return a month later when the villagers were ripe to have someone pay for their troubles. And there was always someone who could be singled out to pay, whether she was truly a witch or not.
Over time, his fee increased from food and lodging and the occasional piece of clothing to coins in his pockets. And the first time a Wolfram baron had needed help with a bit of trouble in order to confiscate some land he coveted, the fee was more than a few coins.
By the time ten years had passed, he was known as the Witch’s Hammer, the Inquisitor from whom witches could not hide. By the time those years had passed, he had visited the handful of universities in Wolfram to talk with the scholars who collected stories about the Fae and the Small Folk. He had puzzled with the other men over the oblique references to something called the House of Gaian that appeared in a few of the oldest stories. Whatever it had been, the House of Gaian disappeared from the stories around the same time that Tir Alainn was first mentioned, so he dismissed it as something too far in the past to be of use to him.
By the time those ten years passed, he had started gathering other men and training them to be his Inquisitors. They were all as he had been—young men, outcast because they were descended from a mating with one of the Fae. He called their magic the Inquisitor’s Gift, and taught them how to use that power in order to hunt the witches whose existence thwarted men’s right to rule the land.
By the time those years had passed, he had reshaped some of the stories traveling storytellers and bards passed from village to village until it became common knowledge that witches were the Evil One’s whores and offered their bodies to decent men in order to trick them into becoming the Evil One’s servants.
When another five years had passed, he slipped back to his home village. It took little effort now to persuade a weaker mind to believe what he wanted that person to believe. No one who had seen him arrive at the inn recognized him as Adolfo, the disinherited son who had run away.
It wasn’t difficult to discover that his father made regular visits to a nearby town and had been doing so for years. It wasn’t difficult to whisper in the maid’s ear when she came to clean his room that the main business that was transacted on those visits took place in a mistress’s bed. He planted a few other seeds as well, and then left them to do their work.
It was a hard year for the family who had turned him away. His mother, upon hearing the whispers about her husband’s infidelities, took a knife to their bed one night and cut out his adulterous heart. She was hanged and then burned.
A few weeks later, his younger brother, still distraught over his parents’ deaths, put his horse to a jump the animal couldn’t possibly take, and died of his sustained injuries. His pretty wife, swollen with their second child, went mad with grief, threw herself into the small lake on the estate, and drowned.
A month after that, Adolfo returned to the village, a prosperous man who simply wanted to make peace with his estranged family. It was almost touching to see how the gentry in the neighborhood worried about him as he grieved. When he left a week later, all he took with him was his young nephew and the boy’s nurse.
Adolfo still stared at the fire.
“You hated me because I revealed your secret, because I couldn’t hide what I had inherited from you,” he said to the mother who was long dead. “You let my father do monstrous things to me in his attempt to win back your love—and retain the wealth you provided. I have used everything he taught me, Mother. I have refined those crude lessons into something elegant. And I use what I learned against your kind. You could have loved me. Because you chose hate instead, I will not suffer a witch to live. I promise you that before I’m done, there won’t be one of your kind left.”
Chapter Thirteen
She wasn’t being deceitful, Dianna assured herself as she and the borrowed mare left Ahern’s farm and trotted toward Brightwood. She just didn’t see any reason to tell Lucian she had met Ari—or that she had decided to go back to the cottage today. It had nothing to do with his returning to Ari’s bed each night, but he would assume it did, and then they’d quarrel about it and he wouldn’t listen, and she didn’t want to quarrel with her twin about some . . . human.
Besides, why should Lucian be the only one to find some distraction these days? Aiden had instructed every bard in Tir Alainn to send him any information they might hear about witches or wiccanfae. The only things that had been passed to him were the songs he’d already heard, but they told the Fae nothing except that they had an enemy in the human world capable of destroying the Fair Land.
They had lost more Clans over the past few days. More pieces of their land were suddenly gone. And there was still no answers.
I am the Huntress, and I am helpless, Dianna ranted silently. How can we fight something when we don’t even know what it is? How can we find these wiccanfae if we don’t know what they are or where to look? It’s like trying to fight a shadow that sucks the life out of whatever it brushes against.
So why shouldn’t she spend a little time satisfying another curiosity. She was curious about Ari. And she was wondering why, if Lucian was finding Ari’s bed so pleasurable, he seemed troubled by it.
As they passed a marking stone, the mare pricked her ears and quickened her pace. Dianna didn’t rein her in. It was already midmorning. Having to wait until Lucian returned to Tir Alainn so that he wouldn’t ask questions about where she was going—and why—and then riding to Ahern’s farm and back to Brightwood had wasted enough time.
Ari was working in the low-wa
lled garden, wearing the same shabby clothes. She looked up when she heard the horse, then smiled and raised a hand in greeting.
“Do you live out here?” Dianna asked, guiding the mare to the wall.
“At this time of year, yes,” Ari said. She petted the mare’s nose. “It’s planting time, and I’ve still got a lot of seeds and seedlings to get into the ground.”
Dianna looked at the still-empty sections of the garden. “If it’s so much work, why plant so much?”
A little puzzled, Ari replied, “To have enough food to last through the winter.”
“But—” What had looked like a large plot of land a moment ago suddenly seemed smaller. “Can you harvest enough from this?”
Ari’s smile now held a hint of worry. “Usually. Some years are better than others. I also pick apples, strawberries, and raspberries. Some blueberries, too, but I’m not fond of them, so I leave most of them for the birds and the Small Folk to harvest. I have a beehive as well, and they share their honey with me. And I trade some baking and honey to Ahern for eggs and milk . . . and a bit of meat. It gets me by.”
All of that, and more, was there for the asking in Tir Alainn, Dianna thought. The Fae didn’t wonder if there might be enough. There was always more than plenty.
“It was kind of you to stop by during your ride,” Ari said. Her smile seemed a little forced, a touch impatient.
So much for my assuming she would be delighted to entertain a gentry lady coming for a visit, Dianna thought. Courtesy forbids her from saying out loud, “Go away and let me do my work,” but her eyes say it all the same. In another minute, even courtesy won’t keep her standing at the wall. She’ll phrase it more politely, but she’ll tell me to go away. She will. I haven’t dealt with many humans. I’ve never wanted to. But they’ve crossed my path enough for me to know she’s different. Why is she different?
“I’ll help you plant the garden,” Dianna said impulsively.
Ari’s mouth fell open. “You—You’re going to help me plant? You’re going to dig in the dirt?”
“Why not? You do it, and it doesn’t seem to have any ill effects.”
“But . . . but . . . you’re a lady.”
She already found the pretense of being a gentry lady sufficiently tiresome to welcome shedding it. “I may be a lady, but I’m also a woman.” She smiled, but she knew her eyes revealed a bit of the Huntress. “I’m not as weak as you seem to think I am.”
“Oh, I don’t think you’re weak,” Ari said hurriedly. “It’s just—” She caught her lower lip between her teeth. “Well,” she said after a long pause, “the work will go faster with an extra pair of hands.”
“That’s fine then. I’ll—”—find some way to get out of this fiend-made saddle without falling on my face or making a fool out of myself.
Ari seemed to be considering the same problem. “How do ladies dismount when a gentleman isn’t around to help?”
With no charm and little grace, Dianna thought sourly, suddenly understanding Ahern’s malicious amusement when he saddled the mare for her that morning. The other day she had simply scrambled out of the saddle in order to reach Ari before the girl fell. Today, dismounting didn’t seem as easy.
“Maybe you could use the wall?” Ari said hesitantly. “Or the chopping block out back?”
Dianna frowned at the wall. It was high enough for her to step onto it—as long as the mare cooperated. She brought the mare around so that the animal stood next to the wall. “Hold her head.”
When Ari had a firm grip on the reins, Dianna carefully dismounted, stepping onto the wall. Half turned to keep one hand on the saddle for balance, she wobbled on the wall, wishing the round, uneven stones offered better footing. She shifted one foot, planted it firmly on the hem of her riding habit, lost her balance, and, with a small scream, fell across the mare’s back.
The mare swung her hind quarters away from the wall, taking Dianna with her.
“Oh, dear,” Ari said in a choked voice.
Silently cursing Ahern, Dianna slid off the mare’s back, then glared at her companion. “Don’t you dare laugh.”
“I wouldn’t, Mistress. Truly I wouldn’t.” Ari clamped a hand over her mouth, her eyes dancing with suppressed laughter.
“Not Mistress, just Dianna.” Brushing at her skirt, Dianna took the mare’s reins in her other hand. “Mistress is a lady who has to remain dignified and polite even under these circumstances. Dianna does not. Since I’m not feeling dignified or polite at the moment . . .”
“Yes.” Ari cleared her throat. “I understand. Why don’t we take the mare around back and let her graze.” She studied Dianna’s riding habit. “And we should find something for you to wear so that you don’t get your clothes dirty.”
“Fine,” Dianna said, looking at her clothes. As if that mattered now. Then she whispered in the mare’s ear, “If you don’t behave, I’ll feed you to my shadow hounds.”
After tying the mare outside the cow shed, Dianna followed Ari to a bedroom off the main living room.
“Isn’t it unusual to have a bedroom in this part of a house?” Dianna asked, looking around. In a Clan house, none of the private suites were connected to the communal rooms. Perhaps human cottages were built differently because they were so much smaller?
“It’s the crone’s room,” Ari replied. “At least . . . it is when there are three,” she finished quietly. She hurried through the arch that led to another room.
While Ari rummaged around in the other room, Dianna studied the bedroom—but slid her eyes quickly past the bed.
Tie the knots and fiddle them, Dianna thought crossly. Being Lucian’s sister didn’t make her less a woman, and any woman worthy of her gender would be curious about what was taking place in that bed, especially if she knew the man involved was the Lightbringer. Especially after spotting the gold filigree necklace set with amethysts that was on the dressing table. That was a trinket that was usually considered sufficient for a parting gift after a brief, pleasant affair. She didn’t think Lucian was ready to part quite yet since there were still several days before the dark of the moon. Was he preparing the way to be able to continue the affair when his promised time was done?
“This will do . . . I think,” Ari said, returning to the room with a pile of clothing.
Dianna turned away from the dressing table and the thoughts that were making her uneasy. The bards knew enough stories and songs about Fae males becoming ensnared by human females. The lesson in all those stories, which were always tragic, was to enjoy and move on—and not look back. To linger too long was to become trapped by feelings that were best left unfelt, to be lured into wanting things that were best left unwanted.
Pushing away the desire to rush back to Tir Alainn and demand that Lucian tell her his intentions, which would only make his refusal to discuss it a certainty, Dianna took the clothing Ari was holding.
“They were my mother’s,” Ari said. “She was taller than me, so I think her things will fit you better. I’ll see to the mare while you change.”
By the time Dianna exchanged her riding habit for the loose-fitting tunic and trousers, the mare was staked to a long lead in the meadow, contentedly grazing, and Ari was back in the garden.
“Your mother and I may have been the same height, but her figure was more . . . generous,” Dianna said, pinching the fabric under her breasts and holding it out before releasing it.
“She was the mother of the three,” Ari said, sadness shadowing her eyes for a moment. “She looked . . . ripe.”
Dianna narrowed her eyes. That was the second time Ari had mentioned “the three.” And there was something about the way she said it that made Dianna sure it wasn’t a meaningless phrase. “Who is the third?”
“The maid,” Ari said, busily digging a small hole. “There have always been three. Now only the maid is left.”
Dianna knew she was prodding a bruise, if not an open heart wound, but she didn’t stop. “What happened to the mother
and the crone?”
“They died.”
Dianna looked around, feeling as if the landscape had shifted on her somehow. The cottage wasn’t a manor house, but it was considerably bigger than most of the cottages that were scattered around the countryside. “If you do the work in the garden, who tends the house and does the rest of the work?”
“I do.” Ari planted a seedling in the hole she’d just dug. “Although the cottage is tended better in the winter than in summer.”
“Then you’re alone here. Truly alone.”
Ari sat back on her heels. “The Great Mother is always here. And so are the ones who came before me. It is not our custom to set up markers, but when I take a walk around Brightwood, I can tell when I pass a place where one of us was laid to rest.”
“But—” She’d seen human burial places. Of course there were markers, and land set aside for that purpose. “So parts of Brightwood are sacred ground?”
“Brightwood is one of the Old Places,” Ari said gently. “All of it is sacred ground. To some people anyway.” She took a breath and blew it out. “Would you like to plant some seeds?”
What a strange girl, Dianna thought a few minutes later as she followed Ari’s instructions for planting peas. She talks about “the three” and sacred ground and being able to tell where the dead rest even when there are no markers. I’ve never heard anyone talk this way. I’ll have to ask Lyrra if she’s ever heard anything like this. She spends more time among humans because of her gift as the Muse. The three. Why is that significant?
“Dianna . . . you’re planting them too close together. They can’t grow that way.”
Dianna glanced at Ari, then looked away to hide her rising temper. How dare the girl chastise her—her!—when she was willing to help? So a few wouldn’t grow. What difference—
If she goes hungry this winter because I’m playing with her survival, will I still say “what difference?”