The House Of Gaian (37 page)

“We’ve never seen a burial for one of the Mother’s Daughters,” one of the minstrels said. “What should we do?”

Aiden smiled dryly. “We’ll play it by ear.”

The quiet conversations around him faded.

Selena, all in white, wore the split gown over trousers. She moved away from the others until she stood alone, facing Nuala, and turned to look at Gwynith. “Will you dance with me this time?”

“I don’t know the steps,” Gwynith said.

Selena smiled. “Just follow me—and follow your heart.”

“Is this dance only for the Ladies of the Moon?” Ashk asked.

Selena shook her head. “Anyone who wishes to honor the one who has left us can join this spiral dance.”

She turned away from the people watching, her arms extended, her palms up.

Power flowed, as soft as moonlight. Balls of white light filled Selena’s palms. Tendrils of light twined down her arms and over the rest of her body until she glowed with the light of the moon.

Then she began to dance. Solemn and simple, just a few steps and a turn, over and over again. But as she moved, moonlight followed her, forming a path.

Rhyann stepped onto the beginning of the path, her steps matching her sister’s.

He could feel the song of those steps, those solemn turns. “Follow me when you have the tune,” he told the minstrels quietly. Raising his pipe to his lips, he let his music follow moonlight down the spiral path Selena created as she danced. A simple tune, repeated like the steps. When he glanced at the minstrels, they nodded, and harp and pipe joined him, taking up the melody while he let his own pipe’s notes twine around it.

Ashk stepped onto the shining spiral, followed by Breanna ... and Liam. Gwynith followed them, then Falco. Fiona and Rory. Gwenn and Donovan. Elinore took Kcely’s hand, and the two of them stepped into the dance. Sheridan and Morphia. Clay, Edgar, and Glynis. Varden. Squire Thurston and his wife.

Kin and neighbors, humans and Fae, Sons and Daughters of the House of Gaian joined the dance. And last... Lyrra, her eyes wet with tears.

Finally Selena stood at Nuala’s feet. She extended her arms again, palms up. Raising her face to the sky, her voice soared as Aiden let the last notes of the song fade.

“Great Mother, we give back one of your Daughters. Let earth take her body. Let air remember her voice. Let water remember her laughter. Let fire remember her heart. Let her spirit fly to the Shadowed Veil and pass through to the Summerland. She is no longer with us, but she will be remembered until she is back among us. Merry meet, and merry part, and merry meet again.”

The ground in front of Selena swelled with moonlight, dazzling the eye. When it faded, there was a gentle mound of bare earth—and Nuala was gone.

As if hearing an unspoken command, people turned and walked out of the spiral until only Selena remained. Then she too turned and walked out—and moonlight filled in the path of the spiral dance, leaving a circle of light around the new grave.

After thanking the minstrels, Aiden tucked his pipe through his sash and joined Lyrra. He held her close and felt her shuddering effort not to cry.

“It was beautiful,” she whispered.

He felt his throat close, felt the sting of tears. “Yes, it was. Come along, my heart, we have to help Breanna and her kin get through the rest of it.” Slipping an arm around her waist, he led her back to the carriage.

Most of the mourners came back to the house to say a few words to Breanna and Keely and have a bite to eat. But even as they talked and ate, they kept glancing at the ever-darkening sky, and soon those with any distance to travel were saying their good-byes. Until all the nighthunters were destroyed, people wouldn’t feel easy about being far from home at night.

Aiden wandered among the people still gathered on the back lawn, making a point to talk to the villagers and farmers who hadn’t had any contact with the Fae yet. As he was making his way back to the house, a voice asked, “Bard?”

“Yes?” Aiden answered, turning toward an exhausted Fae male.

“Lord Aiden?”

“Yes.”

The Fae pulled two pieces of wax-sealed paper out of his inner vest pocket. “I’ve a message for you from one of the northern bards. And a message for Baron Liam, but I don’t know where to find him.”

“I’ll take it to him.” Aiden held out his hand for the letters.

“Why don’t you get something to eat? I’ll talk to Lord Varden. He’ll make sure you have a place to stay tonight.”

Impatience mingled with dread as Aiden hurried over to the group of barons talking to Liam and Donovan.

“A message for you,” Aiden said abruptly, handing over the paper addressed to Liam.

He hesitated before breaking the seal on his message. Noticed Liam did the same.

Then he read the message. “Mother’s mercy.”

“What is it?” Donovan asked sharply, looking from Aiden to Liam.

“Wait,” Aiden said, looking around. “Hunter! Huntress!” When Ashk and Selena turned in response to his call, he signaled them to come over. Lyrra, catching the signal, said something to Fiona before hurrying to join them.

Liam looked at him. Aiden nodded.

“It’s a message from one of the northern barons,” Liam said. He cleared his throat quietly. “The Arktos and Sylvalan barons we were fighting in the north have surrendered. Or more to the point, the men they were leading put down their weapons and surrendered, leaving them no choice. The elders of the House of Gaian who were from the northern end of the Mother’s Hills drafted the terms of surrender, which our barons seconded. The men are being allowed to return home. The Arktos barons and the Sylvalan barons who sided with the Inquisitors will be held until the army has disbursed. Then they’ll be permitted to go home.” Liam closed his eyes. His hand fell limply to his side. “That part of the fight is over. We’ve won that much.”

“Did the baron say anything about captured Inquisitors?” Donovan asked.

“There were no captured Inquisitors,” Ashk said softly. “Were there, Bard?”

Reluctantly, Aiden looked up from his own letter. “No, Hunter, there were not.”

The barons around Liam muttered, but it was Donovan who expressed the outrage. “They escaped?”

Aiden shook his head. He glanced at Ashk—and remembered the chill that had gone through him after the dance the Breton-wood Fae had performed at the Summer Solstice, when those masked faces had stared at him. When
her
masked face stared at him. And Morag’s words:
They’re the Fae
.

“The Wild Hunt?” Ashk said, her voice still soft.

Aiden swallowed hard. “The Inquisitors who were caught were released in a woods, where the Lords of the Woods and the Ladies of the Moon were waiting for them... with packs of shadow hounds.”

“Justice,” Ashk said. “And vengeance. There is nothing quite so terrifying as trying to flee a shadow hound—or the Wild Hunt. The Fae were absent for too long, even when they were present. Now they have returned.”

The barons shifted uncomfortably.

“Was there anything else in your message?” Liam asked after an awkward silence.

“Just something a minstrel reported overhearing,” Aiden said, hoping Liam would understand the dismissive tone and let it go.

“Well?” Liam demanded.

“When the Arktos men were told their barons would be released once their army had gone back through the mountain pass between Sylvalan and Arktos, one of the men said ‘we’ll be waiting for them.’ The barons assumed it was a sign of loyalty. The minstrel heard something different in the words.”

“They hate their own rulers,” Selena said. “Hate them enough to kill them.”

Aiden nodded. “The minstrel’s opinion was that the barons might reach the mountain pass, but he doubted any of them would reach home.”

“I wonder how long the Inquisitors still in Arktos will survive once the army returns home,” Ashk said.

“Not long.” Aiden carefully folded the letter. He might as well say the rest. “The bard who wrote the message to me witnessed the terms of surrender and said they were fair. But the elders from the House of Gaian told the Arktos men that if another witch in Arktos was harmed simply because she was a witch, they would bring down the mountains and bring in the sea.”

Another awkward silence as everyone except Ashk avoided looking at Selena.

“It’s not a bluff,” Selena finally said. “If the Grandmothers gather and bend their will to it, they can do exactly what they said. And Arktos would be no more than a memory of a place.” She looked around. “

Would you have me lie to you? We are the House of Gaian. We are the Great Mother’s Sons and Daughters. We are the Pillars of the World. It is not just Tir Alainn that answers to our will. This world answers as well. It has always been so. It will always be so. You cannot defeat air or water or earth or fire. As long as they exist, we will exist. And as long as we exist, as we will, so mote it be.”

Quiet and troubled, the barons said good night. Aiden wondered how easily the barons staying with Liam would sleep, knowing the Huntress was also a guest in his house. He wasn’t surprised that Ashk slipped her arm through Selena’s as the two of them walked away.

“I’ll say our good-byes to Breanna and find Gwenn,” Lyrra said.

Donovan’s smile looked a little brittle. Aiden almost asked him what was wrong—then remembered that Donovan was married to a witch.

“She’s the same woman she was yesterday,” Aiden said.

“I know,” Donovan replied. “My darling Gwenn.”

“We don’t own the land,” Liam said quietly. “We’re just its stewards. It’s humbling to be reminded of that.”

“And it’s troubling to be reminded that they’re different from us,” Donovan said.

Pricked by anger, Aiden tucked the letter into his sash, next to his pipe. “Are they really so different, Baron Donovan? You’ve never sat beside the bed of a witch whose body was so broken by torture there was no hope of healing. You’ve never listened to her plead with you to let her die. You’ve never buried the rest of her family and then listened to the screams of the ghosts when the nighthunters attacked. They have the power to shatter the world yet they still live by a creed to do no harm.” He paused. “And maybe that does make them different from the rest of us.”

“Are you saying that message didn’t frighten you?” Donovan asked.

“Which part? Mother’s tits, man. Do you understand what the Wild Hunt means? Do you understand what happened in that woods?
My people
did that. And it’s only because I met Ashk and saw the Fae in the west that I’ve come to realize my people are
meant
to do that. But it still frightens me. And it comforts me, that that can be awakened inside the Fae. Your people have suffered, too, and I’ll not deny that. But your kind wasn’t slaughtered first, and none of your counties—and all the people who lived in them—disappeared when the witches died. You still have the land, and your people have a chance to rebuild their lives. We may never regain the pieces of Tir Alainn that were lost, and no one can bring back the dead. So if it comes to a choice, I would rather face the House of Gaian than the Black Coats.”

He started to walk away when Liam placed a hand on his arm.

“You’re forgetting something, Bard,” Liam said. “I’m not just a baron. I’m also a Son of the House of Gaian. I’m still a stranger to myself, still learning to accept this part of me that awakened a few weeks ago. Yes, we’re frightened. Things that have been hidden, or barely glimpsed, are suddenly being revealed, and we can no longer pretend those things don’t exist. In some ways, we’ve all been children.

We can’t be children anymore.”

Donovan scrubbed his hands over his face. “Well, if the two of you are done with these delightful bedtime stories, I’d like to take my wife back to our room and get some sleep.”

“Would you mind seeing Lyrra back to the house as well?” Aiden asked.

Liam gave him a curious look. “You’re not going back?”

Aiden shook his head. “My night vision is good, so I’ve agreed to take a watch tonight.” He smiled ruefully. “My other form is an owl.”

“You can’t go fluttering around in the dark,” Liam said. “You’ll get stepped on.” He shrugged. “You can perch on my shoulder.”

Donovan looked at his friend. “You’re staying, too?”

“I have the gift of fire.”

Donovan shook his head. “You two get to stand out in the dark while I escort two beautiful ladies home.

I guess there are compensations to being just human.”

Gwenn and Lyrra joined them, both women sensing something and searching faces to try to discover the answer.

“I’ll see you later,” Aiden said after kissing Lyrra. He handed her the pipe and message. “Take these for me.”

When Donovan, Gwenn, and Lyrra were gone, Liam said, “Come on, then.”

Aiden hesitated a moment before changing to his other form and fluttering up to the arm Liam held out.

Liam studied him for a moment. “The feathers look good on you, Bard.”

Aiden climbed up Liam’s arm to his shoulder, then nipped his ear.

“Do that again and you’ll have to find another perch,” Liam growled.