The House of Gaian

by Anne Bishop

  “Understood. Your second reason?”

  Gwynith hesitated, obviously struggling with how to say enough without saying too much. “Lady Ashk did not approve of Dianna and the way she was leading the Fae. But I think…I think Lady Ashk would approve of you.”

  And that’s very important to you, isn’t it? “Who is Lady Ashk?”

  “She’s the Lady of the Woods at Bretonwood, a Clan in the west.”

  Lady of the Woods.

  A shiver went through Selena. The woods coming alive. Coming toward her. “What is her other form?”

  Gwynith gave her an odd, searching look. “She is like you, Huntress. She is a shadow hound.”

  Two shadow hound bitches racing through the woods, racing through the moonlight, united against a common enemy.

  “How far away is Bretonwood?” Selena asked, feeling lightheaded.

  “It’s—Well, she isn’t there right now. She’s traveling east to a place called Willowsbrook.” Gwynith touched Selena’s arm. “Lady, please. Let’s get some food and get warm. Then we can talk about whatever you wish.”

  Selena nodded. A few minutes later she was riding beside Gwynith, the escorts who had come with Gwynith riding ahead and behind them, followed by Gwynith’s four companions with their escorts.

  As they reached the clearing that held the shining road that led to Tir Alainn, Selena said, “I think I’d like to meet Lady Ashk.”

  Gwynith replied softly, “I know she’ll want to meet you.”

  Chapter 11

  new moon

  As night gave way to dawn, Breanna watched the storm swiftly coming toward them over the Mother’s Hills. She rose from the bench beside the kitchen door and stretched her stiff muscles, listening for any sound that didn’t belong. When the sun went down yesterday, she and Gwenn had spent an hour arguing with Liam and Donovan about needing to be outside in order to receive whatever message might come through the Great Mother’s branches. Neither she nor Gwenn had been able to explain well enough that the message wasn’t carried on the elements, it was in the elements—something felt on the skin, breathed into the body, tasted. They had to be outside to read it properly.

  An open kitchen door and the bench beside it were as much of a compromise as either man—and Falco—was willing to make, since there were still nighthunters in the Old Place. They hadn’t seen any of the creatures, but they had found more rotting, half-eaten animals beneath dead trees. So the men led the animals to pastures in the morning and led them back to the small pasture near the stables every evening, the children were confined to the house once the sun set, and some of her kin, armed with bows and crossbows, kept watch each night—and she and Gwenn had had to promise they wouldn’t step more than a few paces away from the house until the sun rose.

  Hearing quiet sounds in the kitchen, she turned toward the door. Liam stepped out, rubbing his neck.

  “Gwenn’s put the kettle on for tea and is muttering about toasting some bread,” he said quietly. He leaned toward her and added, “I gathered she doesn’t greet the morning cheerfully under any circumstances.”

  “Did you get any sleep?” Breanna asked, studying him. “You look a bit rumpled.” Which wasn’t surprising since he’d kept watch with her until after midnight, when Falco took his place.

  “A couple of hours,” Liam replied, still rubbing his neck. “Which is more than you got, unless you dozed off out here. And since you so kindly pointed out my rumpledness, I’ll point out that you’re looking a bit disheveled yourself.”

  Breanna looked away, hoping the dawn light was still pale enough to hide her blush. Sleep had been the last thing on her mind while Falco was keeping watch with her. But she didn’t think her older-brother-the-baron wanted to know that.

  She ran her fingers up between her breasts, checking to make sure she’d retied the tunic laces Falco had untied last night.

  “Where is Falco?” Liam asked.

  Breanna jolted and tried not to look guilty. There was no reason to feel guilty. She was a grown woman and could take a lover if she chose to. Why shouldn’t it be Falco? Until she’d gotten to know him, she hadn’t met a man who made her feel ripe and…juicy. The feel of his hands as he caressed her breasts and the way his mouth—

  “Breanna?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Falco?”

  “Mmm, yes.”

  “Where. Is. He?”

  Mother’s tits! Her mind had drifted, and now Liam was giving her that narrow-eyed brotherly stare.

  “Is there anything you’d like to tell me?” Liam asked.

  She really didn’t think so. “About what?”

  “About Falco.”

  “He went over to the stables to check on the men standing watch. Storm’s coming,” she added, changing the subject.

  “Maybe more than one,” Liam replied not quite cryptically enough.

  Breanna crossed her arms over her chest. Gran wasn’t making a fuss about Falco’s interest. Why should Liam?

  The thought of her grandmother brought other uneasy thoughts. “Liam?”

  He was watching the storm. “Hmm?”

  “Do you think Gran’s becoming ill?”

  That got his full attention. “Why do you ask?”

  Breanna shrugged. “Fiona said Gran didn’t eat much at dinner last night and she went to bed shortly after we came back here.”

  “She was tired. That’s all.”

  “She’s never tired.”

  Liam walked over to her, put his arm around her shoulders, and kissed the top of her head. “This has been a trying time for her, Breanna. So many people looking to her to make wise decisions, so much uncertainty about what’s going to happen. I’m not surprised she’s tired. Even my mother dozed off last night while we were still talking, and she’s a generation younger than Nuala. Don’t worry over something a good night’s sleep will set right.”

  She and Liam turned as a boot scuffed the kitchen threshold.

  “Here,” Donovan said as he walked toward them, balancing two plates of buttered toast and two cups of tea. “Tuck into that. It will take a while for us all to get a proper breakfast.”

  “I see Gwenn is teaching you how to make yourself useful,” Liam said. He released Breanna in order to take the plate and mug that Donovan held out to him.

  Donovan just snorted.

  “Does your staff make a fuss over Gwenn knowing her way around the kitchen?” Breanna asked, thinking about how their housekeeper, Glynis, was always arguing with her about what was and wasn’t proper work for a lady.

  Donovan grinned. “The first time Gwenn wandered into the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea, they were appalled. My cook, housekeeper, and butler cornered me and told me I simply had to explain to my lady wife that gentry ladies didn’t do that.”

  Breanna leaned forward. “What did you say?”

  “I told them I’d just married her. If they wanted her out of the kitchen, they could explain it to her.”

  “So what happened?” Breanna said when it didn’t seem like Donovan was going to say anything else.

  “She still wanders down to the kitchen to make her own tea when it suits her, so what do you think happened?”

  Gwenn came out of the kitchen with two more plates and mugs, so Breanna held her tongue and ate her toast while she watched the storm come in.

  “It’s moving fast,” Gwenn said.

  Breanna just nodded. The edge of the storm was in the Old Place now. She watched the lightning, heard the thunder. As the first breath of wind flying before the storm reached her, she shivered. “It must go from one end of the Mother’s Hills to the other.”

  “If it’s still this strong, it must have been a mean bitch of a storm wherever it started,” Gwenn said.

  Breanna noticed the way Donovan frowned at his wife’s choice of words, but she wasn’t sure if he disapproved of the language or if he was considering what it might mean for Gwenn to refer to a storm in that way.

  She set he
r mug and plate on the ground and stepped forward. Gwenn did the same thing before looking back at Donovan. “You should go inside. You’ll get wet out here.”

  “Will you go inside?” Donovan asked.

  Gwenn shook her head. “The storm is out here. The message is out here.”

  “Then I’m staying.”

  Breanna glanced at Liam, saw the stubborn look in his eyes, and didn’t waste the effort to persuade him to do what they both knew he wouldn’t do. Besides, the storm required her attention now.

  She watched the wall of rain come toward her, tasted it on the wind. Tasted the power still entwined with it. She shivered. “This wasn’t a natural storm.”

  “No, it wasn’t,” Gwenn agreed.

  “What do you mean it wasn’t natural?” Liam said.

  Breanna half turned toward him. “It didn’t form on its own. Someone created it—and released it.”

  “Mother’s mercy,” Donovan whispered.

  “It wasn’t formed in the Mother’s Hills,” Gwenn said thoughtfully. “Somewhere in the midlands, I think.”

  “Why would someone do that?” Donovan said, his voice sharp and worried.

  Neither woman answered him. They stepped forward together as the rain came across the lawn and finally reached them.

  A message written on water, whispered on the wind.

  This wasn’t a whisper. Despite how far the storm had traveled, she could still taste the anger that had summoned that wind and sent it flying.

  Yes, something had definitely changed.

  She watched Gwenn cup her hands and sip the rain that collected there. And she watched Gwenn turn pale.

  “Do you have what you need?” Breanna asked.

  Gwenn nodded.

  Breanna walked to the center of the lawn and began to dance, channeling the wind through her body and sending it back to shred the clouds, spreading them out even further. A hand clasped hers…and Gwenn circled with her, taking in the strength from water and sending it out again to hold back some of the rain.

  As they broke apart, Fiona stepped forward to join them.

  Breanna felt the power in the dance, felt the way Fiona’s presence kept grounding that power in the branch of earth, spreading it through the land.

  Acknowledging, celebrating, taming. Isn’t that what Fiona said she and Jenny had done once before?

  When the last cloud passed over them, she stopped the dance. All three women were soaked to the skin and shivering from exhaustion.

  As she pushed her wet hair away from her face, she noticed Liam and Donovan standing side by side, their expressions watchful…and a little wary. Standing near them were Clay, Rory, and Falco, their expressions equally watchful, equally wary.

  We are what we are, Breanna thought wearily as she walked back to the house.

  When they reached the men, Donovan slipped an arm around Gwenn’s waist to lead her the rest of the way to the house. Rory and Clay took Fiona’s arms to support her.

  Liam put his arm around her shoulders, and said tightly, “You’re going to get dry and go to bed before you get some kind of lung fever.”

  “It’s summer,” she muttered. “It’s warm.” But now that the dance was done, her muscles wouldn’t stop shaking.

  Nuala stood in the kitchen doorway, a shawl around her shoulders. She stepped back as Donovan led Gwenn inside and pointed to the large kitchen table. “The kettle’s boiled. Let her sit there for a minute and have something hot to drink.” She raised her hand, cutting off Donovan’s protest before he could say the first word.

  Liam, Clay, and Rory didn’t argue. They pulled out chairs for Breanna and Fiona, then stood back while Nuala took a seat and Glynis set hot mugs of tea in front of the women.

  Breanna felt a pang of regret when she saw the way Falco hurried through the kitchen without saying anything to her. She felt puzzled confusion when he returned with three blankets. He gave one to Donovan, another to Clay, and wrapped the third one around her, his hands resting on her shoulders for a moment in a way that was as comforting as Liam’s arm had been.

  “Now,” Nuala said quietly. “What was the message?”

  Breanna looked at Gwenn, who nodded to indicate Breanna should go first. “Something definitely changed. Something that, I think, preceded the storm. Something that will change things for all of us—witches, humans, the Small Folk.”

  “The Fae, too?” Falco asked quietly.

  Breanna thought about the feel of the wind and nodded. “Yes, the Fae, too. But I can’t tell you more than that.”

  “I can,” Gwenn said. She shivered. “I told you I’d studied in the Mother’s Hills a few years ago and met some of the other witches who were being trained by the Crones. I think…I think this was Selena. It’s hard to tell. There’s been so many who have touched that storm, but at the core of it, I think it was Selena. Her power had a different feel to it because”—She hesitated, then looked at Falco—“Because Selena is a very powerful witch, but she’s also Fae.”

  Breanna felt Falco’s hand come down on her shoulder, but she didn’t think it was meant as comfort to her as much as for the support he needed at that moment.

  “What does that have to do with the storm?” he asked in a strained voice.

  Gwenn kept looking at him, and there was something close to pity in her eyes. “I think someone was foolish enough to provoke Selena into striking back—and the storm was her answer.”

  Chapter 12

  waxing moon

  Adolfo stared out the window, watching the storm continue east into Wolfram. Not much of a storm now—and still too much. Far too much.

  He shuddered.

  “Master?”

  Adolfo turned away from the window. Ubel had been reporting on the number and position of the men marching toward the western border under the family crests of Wolfram’s barons, the fleet of warships standing ready in the harbor, the messages sent by the Arktos barons to confirm their readiness to wage righteous war against the Sylvalan barons who couldn’t see with a clear eye what honorable, decent men needed to do to cleanse their land.

  He’d heard nothing from the moment he’d opened the window to let some rain-cleaned air into the stuffy room. One of the things that had helped him become the Master Inquisitor, the Witch’s Hammer, was his ability to scent magic. It was how he detected witches—the real witches—and it was how he recognized men who had the Inquisitor’s Gift. He trained those men, honing them into weapons. The ignorant might call the Inquisitor’s Gift a kind of magic, but he wouldn’t permit such blasphemy to be spoken out loud. He didn’t like his Inquisitors wondering about magic, except as a thing to be destroyed.

  “Master?”

  “The rain stinks of magic,” Adolfo said heavily, half turning to watch the raindrops roll down the outside of the window. “Do you know what this rain will do, Ubel?”

  “I—I’m not sure, Master Adolfo.”

  Ubel wasn’t sure of much lately. His fault? Perhaps he should have been gentler when his Assistant Inquisitor had returned from the west, even though he had failed to destroy Baron Padrick’s family and had lost the other five Inquisitors who had gone with him. Yes, perhaps Ubel had heard too much of the reprimand in his voice.

  “What does rain do, Ubel?” Adolfo asked gently.

  Ubel watched him warily for a moment, then licked his dry lips. “It falls from the sky to the ground.”

  Adolfo nodded encouragingly. “And then?” He sighed before Ubel could answer, not out of impatience but out of the dread that had begun filling him as soon as he realized what this storm could do. “It soaks into the ground, Ubel. It soaks deep into the soil, into the fields and forests. It fills the brooks and streams and rivers.”

  “Yes, Master. I suppose it does.”

  “This storm…this rain stinks of magic.”

  Adolfo waited patiently, watching as understanding paled Ubel’s fair skin and filled the blue eyes with horror.

  “Yes,” Adolfo said heavi
ly.

  “But—But the magic in Wolfram’s Old Places is dead. We destroyed it when we destroyed the witches.”

  He shook his head. “As long as there is any left, magic never fully dies. You can bleed it out of a place so that the place feels dead, but it’s like creatures that bury themselves deep in the mud when a brook dries up. You think they’re gone, destroyed. Then the rain comes and renews the brook—and they come back with it to live and breed again.”

  “No,” Ubel whispered.

  “Yes. A puddle of magic, hidden so deep even the Small Folk can’t feel it…This rain will feed it…and it will rise again. A small piece of woods will suddenly have enough magic for the Small Folk to live in it. And once they return and take root, no man will be able to set foot there and hope to come out again. This rain will make a few women forget their proper place in the world, and they will remember things they hadn’t known they’d forgotten…and men will no longer rule the land. How can men rule when a female can flood the fields, or hold back the rain so that crops wither and die, or command the land itself to remain barren? How can a man’s toil fight against that?”

  “Then we have to stay here and fight,” Ubel said. “We have to stay and protect our own country.”

  “How do we protect it from rain, Ubel? How do we protect Wolfram when every storm that crosses the Una River from Sylvalan is filthy with magic?”

  “We have to do something,” Ubel insisted.

  “We will. And we are.” Adolfo walked over to the table and looked at the papers filled with Ubel’s neat handwriting, scattered over a map of Sylvalan. “The only way to keep Wolfram clean is to wade through the muck of Sylvalan until it, too, is clean.”

  “Within the next phase of the moon, we’ll have most of our—“We can’t wait.” Adolfo took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. Don’t remind him of his failures. He needs to believe nothing can stand against him. Afterward…Afterward I will have to consider carefully whether or not Ubel has been too mired in Sylvalan’s filth to be trusted. “We must strike now. We must strike fiercely…and without mercy. Any Sylvalan baron who does not support us in our fight against the Evil One and its servants must be destroyed. We must bring the battle into Sylvalan before those creatures, those witches, can do more harm to Wolfram.”