Pillars of the World

by Anne Bishop

  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 was 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 woul
d 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 Alainn. 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.

  “The House of Gaian?” he whispered.

  Morag nodded. “The witch killers will be coming to Brightwood soon. If we stand aside now, if we do nothing here, we have no one but ourselves to blame when Tir Alainn is completely lost.” She stepped back. Something began to fill her, flow through her. She had never stepped onto a battlefield, but she instinctively knew this was what it felt like to be the Gatherer when she rode among screaming, fighting men, sparing some and taking others. When the Gatherer rode in this way, she was not always merciful — and she was not always kind.

  “I’m going back to Brightwood. The witch killers aren’t going to take Ari.”

  “We’ll come with you,” Lyrra said.

  Morag shook her head. “You and Aiden find the Huntress and the Lightbringer. Tell them what you know. And rouse anyone else among the Fae who has the courage to stand and fight.”

  “I’m coming with you,” Morphia said.

  “There’s —”

  “Don’t argue, Morag. I don’t know what I can do, but I’m coming with you.”

  Lyrra looked at the two sisters. “If the witch killers do come to Brightwood, there won’t be much the two of you can do to stop them.”

  The power hummed through Morag, making her smile. “Yes, there is. I have a weapon even the witch killers can’t defy. I have Death.”

  Ari couldn’t stop shivering. It wasn’t caused just by being in a small, cool, dark room in Baron Felston’s cellar. Mostly, it was fear trembling through her as she stared at the tall man who watched her.

  “Why are your kind so resistant?” he asked sadly. “Why can’t you admit to your crimes? You’ve committed no crimes. I know. You all say that. And yet …” He picked up a piece of paper from the long, stained table that dominated the room. He held it out in front of her. “Quite a list of grievances against someone who claims to have done no harm.”

  Her head hurt, and trying to focus on the words in the dim light of a single oil lamp made her stomach churn.

  Mistress Brigston claiming that she had been bewitched into paying several gold coins for a piece of tapestry that Ari had delivered and then magicked away again. Granny Gwynn claiming that Ari had added something foul to a good, wholesome simple that Granny had sold to Squire Kenton to strengthen his wife’s fragile health, making the woman more ill. Odella claiming that Ari had tricked her into taking the fancy she had then been forced to give a man in order to avoid the dire consequences of a thwarted love spell.

  Poor crops, a lack of game, a dry well. Anything and everything that had gone wrong in Ridgeley had been blamed on her.

  I’ve done none of that!

  The Master Inquisitor sighed as if she’d actually spoken, then placed the paper on the table. Bending over, he pressed his hand gently against Ari’s cheek.

  “You have no choice. You must confess. You must admit to what you have done to the good people of Ridgeley. Don’t force me to hurt you. Don’t force me to make you suffer. I will hurt you if that is the only way, but I hope you won’t require pain to help you do what you must.”

  He straightened up, went over to a chest that was pushed against the wall and removed something. He set the object on the table, next to the paper filled with her crimes. It was a metal device that looked a bit like a bridle that would fit tightly over a person’s head — except there were three spikes attached to the inside of it that would pierce the tongue and cheeks when the bridle was strapped on.

  Adolfo brushed his fingers over the spiked bridle. “I will give you a little ti
me to decide if you will allow me to make this as quick and merciful as possible, or if you’ll force me to be the instrument of your suffering.”

  He lowered the wick in the oil lamp until there was barely enough light to see by. Then he walked out of the room, locking the door behind him.

  Ari stared at the spiked bridle — and shivered.

  * * *

  Adolfo walked up the stairs, glad to be away from the damp cellar for a while. He would have liked more time to work with this one. Younger witches could become quite malleable given enough assistance, and their confessions were always so tearfully dramatic. And he would have liked more time to question her about the Fae and their noticeable interest in this Old Place.

  But it was the Fae and their interest that made it imperative to wring a confession out of this witch and dispose of her quickly. However, if the diversion Royce created was successful, the Fae would have no reason to look for the girl.

  Still there was that Fae Lord at the horse farm to consider. He might think to look beyond the borders of the Old Place.

  Adolfo sighed. No, he couldn’t take the time required to soften the girl to the humility that was proper and becoming in a female. But she would give him the opportunity to work with the two younger Inquisitors and teach them how to refine their skills.

  Dianna gave the dead mare in the meadow a wide berth. The shadow hounds sniffed the carcass, then backed away, growling softly.

  Lucian, in his other form, laid his ears back and galloped to the cottage. Dianna followed, feeling her heart thump against her chest when she noticed the open kitchen door.

  Lucian reached the cottage, changed to his human form, and went inside before Dianna and her hounds crossed the meadow. By the time she stepped into the kitchen, he was striding out of the bedroom.

  “She’s gone,” he said, his voice filled with fury and bitterness. “She’s already slunk away with that lout.”

  Dianna looked at the soup kettle on the worktable and the biscuits beside it. She gingerly touched the kettle. Still a bit of warmth. And the biscuits were fresh.