The Pillars of the World

by Anne Bishop

  They can’t abide that, can’t admit that. If they do, they will have to give up their arrogance, their supreme belief that there is nothing to compare with them. And they do not want to see that they are fading, that they are so much less than they once had been.

  Shaken, Morag replaced the journal, selected another. The witches had created Tir Alainn? If that was true, that certainly explained why their disappearance from the Old Places was causing pieces of Tir Alainn to disappear as well.

  We are the wiccanfae, the wise Fae. We are the Mother’s Daughters, the living vessels of Her power. We are the wellsprings. All the magic in this world flows through us, from us. Without us, it will die.

  Morag leafed through a few more pages, then closed the journal in frustration. Ari would be back soon, and she didn’t think the girl would appreciate someone reading her family’s history without permission. But the answers were here, if only there was time enough to find the right one.

  “Why are you the wellsprings? Why are you the Daughters? Why? Why?”

  She pulled out another journal, close to the beginning. The book was so old the binding cracked when she opened it. Trying to peer at the pages without opening the book too far, she swore in frustration. The writing was spindly, and the ink had faded so much it was barely legible.

  She walked over to the window, where she would have the most light, and carefully opened the journal to the first page. She stared at the words.

  I am Jillian, of the House of Gaian.

  She closed her eyes, counted to ten, opened her eyes.

  The words didn’t change.

  I am Jillian, of the House of Gaian.

  The House of Gaian. The Clan that had disappeared so long ago. The ones who had been Fae—and more than Fae. Not the Mother’s Children. The Mother’s Daughters. Her branches. The living vessels of Her strength.

  “Mother’s mercy,” Morag whispered. Tears filled her eyes. She closed the journal before any could fall and ruin the ink.

  The House of Gaian hadn’t been lost. They’d been forgotten because they were the Pillars of the World, and the rest of the Fae hadn’t wanted to remember that they had not created Tir Alainn.

  Rubbing her face against her sleeve, Morag gently replaced the journal, then ran out of the cottage. She swung up on the dark horse’s back.

  “We have to go back to Tir Alainn. We have to—” Her voice broke. “We have to tell the Lightbringer and the Huntress about the Daughters.”

  The dark horse planted his feet, refusing to move.

  “We have to go back one more time—for Ari’s sake.”

  He hesitated, then leaped forward. She let him have his head, let him race through meadow and woods, let him charge up the shining road to Tir Alainn. She had to get there before Dianna and Lucian did something foolish. She had to make them understand.

  Or stop them if there was no other choice.

  “Lucian!” Dianna hurried to meet Lucian as he walked out of that private place in the gardens.

  Lucian raised his head, reminding her of her shadow hounds when they scent prey. “Have you heard from Morag?”

  “Yes, I heard from her.” It was easier now to feel angry when she wasn’t close enough to the Gatherer to feel afraid. “She refuses to help us!”

  Lucian stared at her. “She can’t refuse. She’s Fae. And even the Gatherer yields to the Huntress and the Lightbringer.”

  “Not according to the Gatherer,” Dianna said bitterly. “Not only did she refuse to help, she threatened me. Me.”

  “She’ll regret that,” he said softly.

  “Yes, she will.” Dianna felt something inside her slowly untwist. Not even the Gatherer would stand against both leaders of the Fae. Not even the Gatherer would dare. “What do we do about that . . . that Neall?”

  “What we should have done in the first place. Take care of the problem ourselves.” He strode toward the stables. “You get your shadow hounds. I’ll get your horse. Meet me at the stables and—” He abruptly stopped speaking and pulled Dianna behind a hedge.

  “What?” Dianna said impatiently.

  “Morag. Riding toward the Clan house.”

  “She’s the last person we want to meet right now.”

  “Agreed.” Lucian looked at her, a strange excitement shining in his eyes. “So we’ll avoid her.”

  They parted, Lucian slipping through the gardens to go the long way around to the stables, and she running to the kennels where her shadow hounds were kept.

  Yes, Dianna thought. They would take care of that Neall, and then Ari would have no excuse to leave Brightwood.

  Ari stood in the spot where the spiral dance ended—and, in ending, began another kind of dance.

  She raised her arms, breathed deep as she began to draw the strength of Brightwood into herself.

  The land beneath her feet rolled, spun, swirled, pushed at her as if it were trying to hold in something terrible that was fighting to burst free.

  Ari staggered, her arms dropping to help her keep her balance. Stunned, she just stared at the ground that looked no different but felt so strange.

  The land doesn’t want me, no longer wants to know me. Can the magic that breathes through Brightwood somehow sense that I’m going away? Is that why I can’t focus it, can’t keep it from shifting and scattering? It tingles beneath my feet the way it does when a bad storm is coming. But the sky is clear.

  Shivering despite the warm day, and suddenly uneasy about standing in the meadow, Ari ran to the cottage. As soon as she stepped into the kitchen and closed the door, the fear that made her run like a deer before the hounds disappeared.

  She studied the meadow. It looked no different, but something had happened there. The wounded mare had felt it, too, and she was still standing there, watchful.

  Maybe the land hadn’t rejected her. Maybe, like Neall and Ahern, it had pushed her toward the place where she was the most protected.

  Ari smiled.

  Great Mother, I leave this place to those who will come after me. May the land I go to be as generous in its bounty to those who care for it—and are in its care.

  Best to make use of the time. Neall would be here soon, and there were still some things to be done.

  She took the soup off the stove and placed it on a metal trivet on the worktable. Then she banked the fire in the stove. If Morag returned soon, the soup might still be hot enough to eat. If not, it wouldn’t be difficult to rekindle the fire.

  She looked at her biscuits and frowned. She needed some kind of sack. Remembering her small pack, she rummaged in the storage cupboard until she found it. She wrapped the biscuits in a towel, leaving two of them for Morag, wrapped the cheese she had left in another towel, and a jar of berry jam in another. She filled the two canteens, then slipped them back into their places on the pack.

  “Saddlebags,” she muttered, hurrying to the bedroom.

  As she walked back to the kitchen, she heard the mare scream.

  Dropping the saddlebags on the table, she flung open the top half of the kitchen door.

  The mare was lying in the meadow. She kept struggling to rise, but something was wrong with her legs and she couldn’t get to her feet. She screamed, struggled, screamed again.

  Ari opened the bottom half of the kitchen door. The air thickened in front of her—the warding spells’ reaction when there was something nearby that shouldn’t be allowed to enter.

  Moving from one side of the doorway to the other, she tried to see if there was anything out there.

  Nothing.

  But the mare kept screaming, and . . . Was that white pus pushing out of one foreleg?

  She had to do something. She had to. She could run out to the mare and see what was wrong. She couldn’t just stand there and let the animal suffer. It would only take a minute. Just a minute to run out to where the mare struggled.

  She took a deep breath—and ran.

  She skidded to a stop a few feet away from the mare. It wasn’t pus. It w
as bone sticking through the skin.

  Something had broken the mare’s legs. Broken them so fast the animal hadn’t had time to try to run.

  “Mother’s mercy,” Ari whispered. She whirled to run back to the cottage—and saw the men coming around the sides of the cottage, saw more men vaulting over the low garden wall where they must have hidden. She saw the two who wore black coats. And she saw the tall, lean-faced man who now stood between her and the open kitchen door.

  The woods. If she could make it to the woods, she might be able to hide from them. She knew every path through Brightwood. If she could just reach the woods . . .

  Neall.

  If she ran and all of them didn’t follow, what would happen when Neall came?

  In that moment of hesitation, someone hit her from behind, landing on top of her when she fell to the ground.

  “I told you not to lift your skirts for any other man,” Royce said. “Now you’re going to pay for it.”

  She fought, squirming, twisting, kicking, scratching. She raked his cheek with her nails, drawing blood.

  He hit her hard enough to daze her, and kept hitting her until someone pulled him away.

  She couldn’t think, couldn’t focus, couldn’t get her legs to obey so that she could run.

  A rope was lashed around her wrists. A piece of metal was forced into her mouth, holding down her tongue. More metal was strapped around her head, pressing against the places where Royce had struck her, making them throb unmercifully. Hands grabbed her arms, yanking her to her feet. Dazed and frightened, she was led to the tall man who stood waiting.

  “I am Adolfo,” he said in a gentle voice. “I am the Master Inquisitor, the Witch’s Hammer. You will come with me now so that you will have a chance to unburden your troubled spirit and confess to the crimes you have committed against the good people of Ridgeley.”

  But I’ve done nothing! She couldn’t talk, couldn’t form words with her tongue held down like that. If they would just let her speak, she could tell them she was leaving.

  Then she looked into the tall man’s eyes and knew he didn’t care about the people in Ridgeley. He only cared about being the Witch’s Hammer.

  And there was only one way he was going to let her leave Brightwood.

  “Tuck this in your saddlebag,” Ahern said, handing Neall a small bag.

  As the contents of the bag shifted, Neall heard the clink of coins. “Ahern—”

  “Don’t argue.” Ahern’s face was set in stubborn lines that made Neall wonder if Ari had inherited her stubborn streak from the old man. “You’re going to need provisions on the way, and you’ll need something to tide you over when you get to your land. I won’t be going hungry for lack of a few coins if that’s what’s bothering you.”

  Neall tucked the bag of coins into his saddlebag, then busied himself with tying down the flap securely. “Thank you.”

  “You take good care of the girl. That’s all the thanks I want or need.”

  Neall nodded. He took a moment to steady his feelings, knowing the old man wouldn’t want any maudlin displays. He held out his hand. “May the Mother bless you all of your days, Ahern.”

  Ahern grasped Neall’s hand, then stepped back. “Go on with you. You’re wasting daylight.”

  Neall mounted Darcy, then watched Ahern check the girth on the dark mare’s saddle. He would have felt better if he could have taken the mare’s reins and led her, but Ahern had said she would follow and there was no reason to doubt that she would.

  Raising one hand in farewell, he pressed his legs against Darcy’s sides. The gelding needed no further urging to canter toward Brightwood. The mare ran beside them, tossing her head in annoyance. He wondered if that was because she was going with them or because she was envious that the gelding had a rider.

  You’ll have a rider soon, Neall thought as they crested the rise and the cottage came into sight. It looked more shut-up and abandoned than he’d expected it would. As if Ari was already gone.

  As they rounded the cottage to reach the kitchen door, both horses stopped abruptly and laid their ears back.

  Neall stared at the mare lying so still in the meadow. Then he glanced at the open kitchen door, vaulted out of the saddle, and ran inside.

  “Ari!” He didn’t need to search. He could sense she wasn’t there.

  “The Black Coats took her,” said a gruff voice.

  Neall turned toward the open door and saw the small man standing just beyond the threshold. He couldn’t speak. One thought filled his head until there was nothing else: They took Ari. The witch killers took Ari.

  “Nothing the Small Folk could have done,” the small man said. “There were too many men. And those Black Coats—” His face twisted up in disgust and fear. “They have some kind of magic, but it’s nothing clean, nothing like what we feel coming from the Mother. So you’d best beware, young Lord, when you go to fetch the witch and get her away from those . . . creatures.”

  “Fetch her?”

  “They were riding toward the baron’s estate.”

  His heart began beating again. He hadn’t been aware that it had stopped. “She’s—She’s still alive?”

  The small man nodded grimly. “Go fetch the witch, young Lord. Fetch her and take her far away from here to some place where the Black Coats won’t find her.”

  When Neall took a step forward, the small man shifted. At another time, it would have been amusing to see one of the Small Folk trying to block a doorway. If Ari died, he didn’t think there would ever come a day when he would feel amused by anything again.

  “You’d best take what the witch will need,” the small man said, nodding toward the pack on the table. “I’m thinking you won’t have time to come back this way.”

  Desperate to leave, Neall glanced around, ready to deny that there was any time to waste on anything. But he saw the saddlebags and the long cape on the table in the main room, and the small pack with the canteens on the kitchen worktable. If—No, when he got her away from the Inquisitors, she would need those things. He grabbed them and ran out to the horses.

  The mare was fidgeting and blowing, but she stood still while he fastened the saddlebags, rolled the cape and tied it to the back of the saddle, then tied the small pack to one of the rings on the front of the saddle. Ahern must have chosen that particular saddle because it was made for a traveler.

  The small man watched him, then nodded in approval. “The mare came from the Lord of the Horse?”

  “Yes,” Neall said, hastily checking things one last time. Then he realized what the small man had said. “You’ve always known about him?”

  “We’ve known. Just as we’ve always known about you, young Lord. Just as we’ve always known about the Daughters,” he added quietly. “But some things are not meant to be spoken.”

  Neall shook his head. There wasn’t time to ask what the small man meant.

  “There are the five of us who were nearby when we felt something evil touch the land.” He gestured to the other four small men who slipped out of the cow shed. “If you’ll take up two of us, the mare can carry the other three. We’ll do what we can to help.”

  “I’ll take what help you can give.”

  After lifting three of the men onto the mare’s saddle, he set another on Darcy’s saddle, mounted, then lifted the last man up behind him.

  As they galloped toward the baron’s estate, he fretted about the minutes that had passed. But surely nothing terrible could happen to Ari in so short a time.

  Surely not.

  When Morag burst into the room where she’d last met Dianna, the Huntress wasn’t there. But Aiden, Lyrra, and Morphia were.

  She rushed toward them, stumbling in her haste.

  Aiden grabbed her arms to steady her at the same time Morphia and Lyrra hurried to stand beside her.

  “What’s wrong?” Morphia said.

  “Where . . . the Huntress? The Lightbringer?” A dam inside her had burst during the ride back to Tir Alain
n. Now too many feelings were clamoring to be heard. The fierce need to speak made her mute for several seconds.

  “What is it, Morag?” Aiden asked gently. “What has happened?”

  Morag looked into his eyes and saw passion that had not been diluted from living in Tir Alainn because he, too, often walked in the human world. His gift had demanded that from him. If there was anyone who could understand—and make others understand—it was the Bard.

  “The witches. The wiccanfae.”

  Aiden nodded encouragingly while Lyrra and Morphia made soothing noises.

  “Wiccanfae is an old name for the witches,” Aiden said.

  Morag shook her head. “They’re the wiccanfae. The wise Fae. The Daughters. We forgot them.”

  “Morag . . .” Aiden said worriedly.

  The words rose from her in a keen. “They’re the Mother’s Daughters. They weren’t lost. They were never lost. We chose to forget them. We did that.”

  “Morag.”

  “They’re the Pillars of the World. They created Tir Alainn. That’s why pieces of it disappear when they leave the Old Places. ‘As we will it, so mote it be.’ ”

  “How could the witches have created Tir Alainn?” Aiden demanded.

  She looked into stormy blue eyes that appeared so dark in his now-pale face. Painful knowledge filled those eyes as he began to put together bits and pieces. Seeing pain that matched her own filled her with strength. She wasn’t alone now. At least in this, she wasn’t alone.

  “The witches . . . are the House of Gaian.”

  She felt the words shudder through him, felt his body tense from the emotional blow.

  Lyrra made a keening sound, then clamped one hand over her mouth and turned away.

  Morphia sagged against her for a moment before she, too, turned away.

  Aiden faced her, his hand still holding her arms.