by Anne Bishop
Liam gritted his teeth, concentrated on staying in the saddle. “This isn’t the way to the north road.”
“We’re taking the west road out of the city,” Padrick said. “We’ll circle around. The horses are fresh, so we should be able to catch up with your groom on the north road soon enough.”
“And if someone’s waiting for me on the north road?” Liam demanded.
“Then your man will have a better chance by himself,” Padrick replied sharply. “It’s you they’re after, not the people who work for you.”
You don’t know that, Liam thought bleakly. He continued to follow Padrick toward the west road because he was still too weak and sick to do otherwise. But when they left the city and he saw the road ahead of them lit by the full moon, he reined in, too uneasy to continue.
“What’s the matter?” Padrick asked, turning his horse so he and Liam faced each other. “Are you feeling too sick to ride? Here.” He extended a hand. “Give me the reins. I’ll lead your horse. You just hang on to the saddle. When we catch up to the cart, you can ride with your groom.”
Which is what I should have done in the first place. “I have a question that needs an answer before we go any farther.”
Padrick made an impatient sound. “What answer do you need that can’t wait?”
“Who are you?”
Padrick gave Liam a strange look. “Has that poison addled your brains? I’m Padrick, the Baron of Breton.”
Fear. Temper. Sickness. It was an uncomfortable mix sliding around inside him. “Let me rephrase the question,” Liam said. “What are you? You ride a horse that makes no sound on a city street. You indicate the other western barons wouldn’t dare harm you, which means you have far more power over them than anyone in the council realizes.”
“Not I,” Padrick said quietly.
“And you conveniently appear to help me, claiming I’ve been poisoned and those men had been sent to kill me. You seem to know too much and say too little. So I ask again: What are you?”
Padrick said nothing for so long, Liam wondered if he should try to make a run for it back into the city. Then, “I am the Baron of Breton. I am gentry.” Padrick paused before adding, “And I am Fae.”
Liam swayed in the saddle, not sure if it was shock or sickness that suddenly made him so weak. He was on a moonlit road, alone, with one of the Fae?
“So now you have to decide, Baron Liam,” Padrick said. “Are you going to risk riding with one of the Fae on the night of the Summer Moon, or are you going to take your chances and ride north alone, or back to the city, and hope you don’t meet anyone who wants to finish killing you? I’ll ride north with you to help you get home. Or I’ll keep riding west.”
It wasn’t a hard choice when there really was no choice. “If I’m going to be riding with one of the Fae tonight, shouldn’t it be a fair maiden who gives me a come-hither look?” Liam asked. Relief swept through him when he saw a glint of humor in Padrick’s eyes.
“You’re stuck with a man, and I save my come-hither looks for my wife.”
Liam grinned. The sickness was still there, and the worry about his family and what might happen in the council tomorrow, but he felt a little boyish excitement, too. “Let’s ride.”
Turning his horse, Padrick held the animal to an active walk.
Liam chafed at the slower pace, then realized it was a chance to ask a few questions. After all, he’d never met any of the Fae before.
“You’re riding a Fae horse. That’s why I couldn’t hear it on the streets.”
Padrick nodded. “A Fae horse has silent hooves, unless it wants to be heard.”
Liam admired the gelding. “I’ve never seen a finer horse. Well, maybe I’ve seen as fine.”
“Oh?” Padrick said, giving Liam a long look.
“When I bought my stallion, Oakdancer. There were some ‘special’ horses that weren’t for sale, and I saw them only at a distance. Oakdancer’s light on his feet, but not like your gelding.”
“Where did you acquire your stallion?”
“From a man named Ahern.”
Padrick nodded. “He must have seen something in you to sell you one of the half-breds.”
“Half-breds?”
“An animal bred from a Fae horse and a human horse. He raised the finest horses in Sylvalan. But that was to be expected, since he was the Lord of the Horse.”
“The—” Liam’s jaw dropped. “Ahern? The Lord of the Horse?” He thought back to the days he’d spent at Ahern’s farm when he’d gone to buy the stallion—and the odd way Ahern had gone about choosing the right horse for the rider... and the right rider for the horse.
“So you’ve already met the Fae, laddy-boy, even if you weren’t aware of it,” Padrick said.
Who could have guessed that gruff old man was Fae, let alone the Lord of the Horse? “I heard he died.”
“Yes,” Padrick said softly, grimly. “He died helping a young witch escape from the Inquisitors. Come along. We have a fair amount of road to put behind us tonight.” He urged his horse into a canter.
Touched a wound, Liam thought as he brought his horse alongside Padrick’s. Maybe it wasn’t just his own people and the witches who had reason to look hard at the Inquisitors. And maybe that was a good thing. “Do you think the Fae will help us?” he asked, raising his voice to be heard.
“I can’t say what the Fae in the rest of Sylvalan will do,” Padrick replied. “But I can tell you this—if the Inquisitors come to the west, they’ll die.”
Liam judged they’d been riding for an hour, taking farm lanes and going cross-country at times before they reached the north road. A few minutes after that, he saw the cart up ahead, overturned in the middle of the road. He saw the downed horse and the blood turning the road black in the moonlight—and he saw the man’s body.
He kicked his horse into a gallop to cover the remaining distance. It slid to a stop when it scented the blood, throwing him heavily against its neck. He slid out of the saddle, but managed to keep a firm grip on the reins. Not that it would do any good. The horse wouldn’t stand. Not with the scent of blood so strong in the air.
“Give me the reins,” Padrick said. “I’ll see to the horse.”
Liam handed the reins to Padrick, then stumbled toward the man in the road. Falling to his knees, he turned the man over gently, saw the cross bolts, heard the wheezing rattle of breath.
It wasn’t his groom. It was Kayne, the upper footman.
Kayne opened his eyes, stared at Liam. “They killed me,” he said, gasping with the effort to speak.
“Hold on,” Liam said. “We’ll find some help for you.” Hollow words since he knew they couldn’t reach anywhere fast enough to save the man.
“They killed me,” Kayne said again, sounding baffled. “I was riding out to warn them that they needed to watch for two riders, but they killed me before I—” He struggled to breathe.
Liam sat back on his heels. “You were going to betray me? Why?”
“They— They said I had the gift. That I didn’t have to remain a servant. They said if I did a good job of keeping a watch on you for them, they would train me to be an Inquisitor. I’d be a powerful man then, even more powerful than a—a baron. But... they ... killed me.”
Kayne stared up at Liam with dead eyes, his expression still baffled.
Padrick cursed softly. “He must have sent word to them somehow the moment he was told to pack your things.” He dropped to one knee, placed his hand on Liam’s shoulder. “Liam, we have to get away from here. Now. This attack couldn’t have happened that long ago or he wouldn’t have still been alive. There’s no way of knowing if the men working for the Inquisitors are ahead of us or behind us, but they can’t be that far away. And either way, we’ve got to put some distance between us and this road.”
“Hogan was a Willowsbrook man,” Liam said. “He wouldn’t have let someone else drive the cart and leave him behind to make his own way back home. Which means he’s wounded or
dead, back on the road somewhere.”
“We can’t look for him,” Padrick said firmly. “And we can’t stay here.”
“I wonder if the footman Kayne replaced actually ran off with the parlor maid. Or was that the first death?” He shook his head, struggled to his feet with Padrick’s help. “Where do we go?”
“Where’s your estate?”
“Northwest. Near the Mother’s Hills.”
“Then that’s where we go. Without the cart, we don’t have to stay on the roads. That’ll make it harder for anyone to find us.”
Padrick led Liam to the horses and held the reins while Liam mounted.
“I’ll do,” Liam said, answering Padrick’s unspoken question.
Nodding, Padrick mounted his horse and turned toward the west. “Then let’s ride.”
In the early dawn, Ubel boarded the yacht and quietly entered the cabin.
“Well?” Adolfo asked softly, his doe-brown eyes giving no hint of what he was thinking.
Ubel bowed his head. “We failed, Master. That bastard eluded us. He shouldn’t have been able to, but he did.”
“It was a sound plan,” Adolfo said quietly, calmly. “Even if you didn’t receive my consent before starting it.”
Ubel accepted the gentle-sounding reprimand, knowing that, even crippled, Adolfo could inflict a harsh punishment.
But it angered him. He wasn’t an apprentice Inquisitor. More often than not, especially in these last few months, he’d made his own decisions about what needed to be done, had given orders to other Inquisitors. He’d never been reprimanded for it—until now. That, too, was one more thing he was going to lay at Baron Liam’s doorstep, one more thing the baron would pay for.
“It was a sound plan,” Adolfo said again. “Why didn’t it work?”
“He had help,” Ubel replied, resentment swelling inside him. “First with avoiding the guards who had waited for him at his club, then in getting out of the city.”
“Who?”
At least he could offer that much. “Padrick, the Baron of Breton.”
Adolfo poured a glass of wine, drank slowly. “So. There will be two barons missing from council later today. Probably not enough to change the outcome, not after that young bastard’s speech yesterday, but it means we can’t afford to have any other barons becoming indisposed right before the vote. That would cause too much talk, too much speculation of the wrong kind.” Setting the glass on the table, he reached down, pulled up a bag, and dropped it on the table.
Ubel heard the clink of shifting coins.
“There’s nothing we can do about the coming vote, but that doesn’t mean we can’t take care of other problems,” Adolfo said. “Send four men to Willowsbrook.”
Ubel smiled.
Adolfo shook his head. “We’ll prepare the ground this time. Ripen the people until they’re ready to listen. No one is to go near the baron’s family. Three of the men will draw as much magic as they can from the land and turn it back on the baron’s estate and the village. The other will find a reason to spend time in the village tavern and use his Inquisitor’s gift to plant a few thoughts in the minds of the people around him. By the time he leaves, I want the tavern owner to be certain that the cause of the village’s sudden ills is because the young baron is too weak—or too bewitched—to act against those who are the Evil One’s servants, and the Evil One has found a place to take root. Let him fight against his own people’s fears and troubles. That will keep him occupied for the time being.”
“And the other baron? What about him?”
Adolfo reached for his glass, took a sip. “He must be punished for interfering with us. You’ll see to it personally, Ubel. Take five men to assist you. I want no mistakes this time.” He sipped again. “It doesn’t matter if the four men reach Willowsbrook before the young baron, but it’s important that you reach Breton before Baron Padrick. If he’s still helping the whelp, he’ll be delayed a couple more days, so you shouldn’t have any trouble arriving ahead of him if you ride hard. I want it done and all of you gone before he returns home.”
“And what is it you’d like done, Master?”
“Give his people a gift that flies in the dark. Then find out what is most dear to him—and destroy it.”
Chapter Twelve
With Aiden beside her, Lyrra rode toward the mist at the edge of the world. Rolling hills, sparkling streams— they vanished into that wall of white that defined the borders of each Clan’s territory. Islands of land that had been created out of dreams and will, according to the entries the Crones in Ari’s family had written in their journals. Islands that were anchored to the human world by threads of magic the Fae called the shining roads—and anchored to each other by shining threads of magic they called bridges.
She’d never wondered how the bridges could shorten the distance between one Clan’s territory and another, how it was possible to cover the same distance in a few minutes that would require a half-day’s ride in the human world. It was part of the magic of her world that she’d simply accepted, like the rest of Tir Alainn.
She looked at the mist and the two shining arches that indicated the two bridges that connected this Clan to others.
Aiden reined in, studied the two arches, then looked at her. “We can still change our minds.”
Lyrra pressed her lips together. They’d talked about this last night. Both bridges led to Clans that were northeast of here. One bridge connected with the Clan that was a good day’s ride from this place; the other connected to the Clan that would be a two-day journey in the human world.
She didn’t like the longer bridges. Never had liked them.
It took a few minutes to ride the shining road to the human world. It took thrice that long to cross even the shortest bridge, when all you had beneath you was a wide, shining path that created a tunnel through the mist. It took thrice again that long to cross one of the longer bridges. It felt so much longer when you were riding through that tunnel in the mist, watching for that archway on the other side. She didn’t want to take that long bridge, but even using those shining threads as much as possible, it was still a long journey to the west, and the days were bleeding by so fast. The Summer Moon had come and gone last night, and every day it took them to find the Hunter was another day when more witches—and more Clans—might be lost.
“We need to swing around the Mother’s Hills as quickly as possible in order to head southwest. We’re of one mind in that.” She waited for Aiden’s nod of agreement. “Lucian took the bridge to the neighboring Clan early this morning. If we ride in after him, it will just be the same scene as yesterday. Since we’re both heading north to go around the hills, we’ll continue having the same scene. The long bridge will cut two days off the journey—and put us ahead of Lucian. Last night that seemed like the best choice. It still does.”
“All right, then,” Aiden said, still studying the shining arches. “Let’s not waste the time by sitting here.” He gave his horse the signal to move on, the packhorse obediently following behind him.
When he reached the arch to the long bridge, his horse snorted, danced a little.
“Easy boy,” Aiden soothed. “Easy. It’s just another bridge. You’ve seen hundreds by now.” Coaxing but firm, he urged the horse forward, rode into that tunnel through the mist.
Lyrra followed. Her hands tightened on the reins when her mare tensed and planted its feet as soon as it was on the bridge, refusing to go forward.
“Follow Aiden,” Lyrra said quietly. “Follow the others. You don’t want to be left behind, do you?”
After another moment’s hesitation, the mare trotted forward, expressing its unhappiness about being on the bridge with a gait so rough Lyrra clenched her teeth to keep from biting her tongue.
They hadn’t gone that far when they caught up to Aiden and the packhorse. In fact—she looked back over her shoulder—she could still see the archway that led to the Clan territory they’d just left.
The animal
s shifted uneasily, as if they didn’t like what was under their feet. Aiden stared at the tunnel ahead of them, frowning.
He handed the packhorse’s lead to Lyrra. “Stay here. I want to ride up ahead just a bit.”
“I’ll go with you,” Lyrra said quickly.
Aiden gave her a look that silenced further protests. “Stay here.”
She watched him trot away from her, then became occupied with getting her mare to stand. When she looked up again, tendrils of mist drifted across the shining bridge.
Her mouth went dry, making it impossible to swallow. Her heart began beating fast and hard.
Then...
“Lyrra! Go back, Lyrra! Go back!”
Aiden’s voice sounded oddly muted, but she heard fear in it—and something close to panic.
She turned her mare, aimed the animal for the archway, and dug her heels into the mare’s sides.
The mare leaped forward into a headlong gallop, the packhorse matching the pace.
Lyrra glanced back, almost lost her balance.
Stay ahead of him. Stay ahead of him. He’ll hesitate if you start flagging.
She screamed. In terror. In defiance. She wasn’t sure. But the sound of her voice, so raw and primal, produced another burst of speed from the mare and the packhorse.
Aiden was behind her, his horse galloping flat out. And behind him ...
A silent avalanche of mist filling the tunnel, rushing toward them. The shining bridge disappearing under it. And Aiden barely a length ahead of it.
She felt the difference in the mare’s pace, felt how the animal was suddenly working for each stride, as if they’d hit a patch of boggy ground.
She emptied her mind of everything but the archway, so close now but still just out of reach.
Closer. Closer.
The mare and packhorse shot through the archway into the perfect morning light that bathed Tir Alainn.
Lyrra reined in hard a few lengths away from the bridge, then twisted around in her saddle.
