The House Of Gaian (30 page)

In the deepening twilight, Ashk watched cookfires bloom in the fields like exotic flowers. She was in the Mother’s Hills. The House of Gaian lived here. The House of Gaian ruled here. Power breathed here, in the land, in the water, in the very air. She drew in air slowly, savoring its richness—and caught the slight stink of fear from the army of humans and Fae that were spread out over the land.

Yesterday evening, she and her companions and huntsmen had ridden into that army camped near the hills. Thousands of men, human and Fae, waiting for the midland barons and the Fae leaders to decide how to reach Willowsbrook. The quickest way lay right in front of them, but none of them had dared send as much as a small party of men into the Mother’s Hills to request passage to the other side.

Then she rode up to the tents that were the barons’ quarters and both sides dumped the decision on her shoulders with a swiftness she’d found a bit staggering. The Fae would follow her because she was the Hunter. The barons would abide by her decision because, they were relieved to discover, she was Baron Padrick’s wife and, therefore, would not dismiss the safety of humans simply because they were humans.

She had no idea how or why they came to that conclusion, even though it was true, but it had allowed all of them to get a few hours’ sleep instead of arguing half the night about choices that weren’t choices at all since they couldn’t go around the hills without tangling with another piece of the Inquisitors’ army. So, early the next morning, with Rhyann as their guide to show them the closest road, she led her companions into the Mother’s Hills—and an army marched behind her.

She took another deep breath. Power seeped into her, brushing away cobwebs of fatigue. She would sleep well tonight—and hopefully not dream too intensely about Padrick. It was a bit embarrassing to wake up aching and wet and wonder if she’d made any sounds that had disturbed the other sleepers around her.

“Does it feel strange to you?”

Relieved to have her thoughts pulled away from that particular path, she smiled at Rhyann. “No. It feels like home. It’s the first place since I left the west that feels like home.”

Rhyann studied her, looking slightly puzzled. “How does it feel like home?”

Ashk shrugged. “It just does. More potent than the magic that flows through Bretonwood, but not so different. It soothes—and also makes me aware of how much I miss my home woods, my husband and children, my Clan. And it makes me realize again how much we can lose if we don’t drive the Inquisitors out of Sylvalan. The people in the east have been wounded. Lives have been torn in ways we cannot fix.

But we can lance the wound and drain the pus from it so that it has a chance to heal.”

“There will be scars from those wounds,” Rhyann said quietly. “Scars that may not fade for generations.”

“Yes. And those scars will require careful attention to make sure nothing that may be festering beneath them has a chance to take hold.”

“We’ll all have to make some changes if we want to keep Sylvalan safe.”

“Then we’ll make some changes.” Ashk looked over the fields. “We’ll learn from one another, come to know one another better. We can learn to see the whole of the land that anchors all of us instead of our individual pieces of it.” She smiled. “And I know just how to begin—with music and stories.”

“You can’t expect Aiden and Lyrra to spend the night going from camp to camp singing and telling stories,” Rhyann protested. “They’ve put in a hard day’s travel, too.”

“There are bound to be a few bards and minstrels among the Fae here. A few storytellers, too. What Aiden and Lyrra begin will ripple through the rest of the camps. Others will pick up the tunes, tell the tales.”

“And humans and Fae will take comfort in the songs and stories they discover they have in common and pleasure in the ones one side or the other hasn’t heard?”

“Exactly.”

Rhyann crossed her arms over her chest. “And what about the House of Gaian?”

“I imagine you have a few stories to tell, too,” Ashk replied blandly. Was it just the way the firelight had flickered over Rhyann’s face at that moment, or had she really seen a flash of mischief in the witch’s face?

“I know some stories,” Rhyann said, her voice equally bland. “But I think the storytellers among us would have more suitable fare.”

Oh, how I’d love to give you one glass of wine too many and hear the stories you might tell about
your sister
. She’d been very careful not to ask Rhyann anything about Selena. She wanted to know about the Huntress. Oh, how she wanted to know. But it didn’t seem right to lure Rhyann into revealing family matters, and Rhyann hadn’t offered any information after the night they’d met her.

“I’d better tell the Bard and the Muse their gifts are needed,” Ashk said. She walked away from Rhyann

—and temptation. By her estimation, they were a day and a half away from Willows-brook, so she’d find out soon enough what she needed to know about the Huntress.

Adolfo opened the door that led out onto a terrace, letting the rain lash his face, soak the fine carpet beneath his muddy boots. The mud and the wet carpet were a small way to punish the baron’s wife. The woman was not docile, despite the fact that the baron had followed all the procedures to make her so.

Oh, she did what was required, said what was required... but hatred burned in the back of her eyes.

Should he warn the baron to watch his back? No. If the fool ended up with a knife plunged into his heart one night after using her, it was no more than he deserved.

There was hatred in the baron’s wife that discipline would never exorcise. There was fury in the storm that chained him to this house.

A bitch of a storm.

Adolfo stared out at it, as if his stare alone could crush it. Instead, it was crushing him. His army was mired in roads turned to mud. The wheels of supply wagons were sunk to the axles, and even with men straining until muscles tore in their effort to help the horses pull the wagons out, they advanced a handspan at a time. Their only choice had been to empty the wagons and have men carry supplies along with their own packs, exhausting the men to the point where they weren’t fit to meet the enemy. Lightning struck old trees that fell across the road, forcing more men to expend time and effort to chop and haul enough aside to let men and wagons pass. Fields were drowning under lakes of water. Creeks had risen and washed away bridges.

A bitch of a storm, reeking with magic and fury, aimed right at him.

He knew who to blame for that.

Leaving the door open so that the storm would frame him, he turned to look at the pale, trembling baron.

“Were my orders so difficult that you found them impossible to follow?” Adolfo asked gently.

“No, Master Adolfo,” the baron replied, looking at his hands clasped white-knuckle tight in his lap.

“All you had to do was gather the complement of men from your county and wait for the rest of the army to arrive. Why couldn’t you do that?”

When the baron just hunched his shoulders, Adolfo said nothing more, letting silence take on the weight of a weapon.
You’re a weak man
, he thought as he watched the baron,
used to being guided. You
resented knowing it was your wife’s strength and intelligence that kept your estate and your
county from being mired in debt, that it was her will that kept you from gobbling up the prosperity
of the villages under your hand like a greedy child. What glee you must have felt when my
Inquisitors helped you tame her, what pleasure you must have had every time you disciplined her
for defying her new place in the world, what joy you must have experienced when you raped her
after a beating. But like a greedy child who now has the means of punishing the once-restraining
hand, you thought there were no restraints, no one to whom you had to answer. You will learn
differently
—
and you will learn the lesson so well you will never dare disobey again
.

“I thought—” The baron stammered, struggled to collect his thoughts. “I only wanted to help our side win the battle. I thought if Baron Liam was eliminated, it would make it easier for the army to march through his county and meet the real enemy, the bitch servants of the Evil One.”

“But you didn’t eliminate him,” Adolfo said, his voice viciously gentle.

“We should have!” The baron finally looked up, confusion and defiance in his face. “He wasn’t expecting an attack. He didn’t have that many men gathered at his estate. Certainly not enough to defeat my men.”

“But he did have enough men.”

“He didn’t! Even with those Fae helping him, he didn’t. He wasn’t prepared for an attack. We would have captured him or killed him if...” The baron swallowed hard. “If it hadn’t been for that wind.”

“A wind that was able to defeat three hundred men.” Adolfo put just enough skepticism in his voice to sting, even though the storm raging outside was sufficient testimony that the witches in this cursed land were far stronger than any he’d encountered in Wolfram or Arktos. “A wind
killed
three hundred men.”

He had questioned the one man who had escaped the slaughter and managed to make his way back to his home county. Had questioned him carefully. A huge funnel of wind that consumed everything in its path. A
controlled
funnel of wind. The spot in his lower back that always turned cold when he was afraid felt icy now.

The baron looked away. “I lost my son, my
heir
. That wind killed him.”

And that would be the punishment. The baron hadn’t yet considered what the loss of those other men would mean to the farms and villages in his county, wouldn’t think of the cost of those lives until his steward made the trip to collect the tithes that filled the baron’s pockets. Those pockets would be less full this year. He would insist that the tithe be lowered for every family that had lost a father or a son because of this ill-conceived attack as a compensation for the loss of a worker in his prime. That loss of income would be a punishment, too. But the son, the heir ...

Adolfo drew on his Inquisitor’s Gift of persuasion, let it roll through his voice, turning the mildly spoken words into whiplashes on the heart. “That wind didn’t kill your son. You did.”

The baron’s head snapped up, his eyes full of shock ... and a kernel of anger.

“
You
decided to attack the Baron of Willowsbrook on your own instead of waiting for the rest of the army.
You
sent your heir to lead the men who died without considering
all
the enemies that might be waiting for you there.
You
ignored the dangers in order to indulge in some childish rivalry with the other barons.
You
wanted to be the first to encounter the enemy, to defeat the enemy, to be praised for your courage, to be envied for your vigor. Because of your willfulness,
you
sent those men to their deaths.

And
you
killed your heir.”

The baron wept silently, his kernel of anger crushed under the weight of persuasion.

Watching him, Adolfo felt nothing but contempt. “And because of your recklessness,” he continued, “

they’re aware of the army now.” The storm raging outside was confirmation of that. “We no longer have the advantage of swiftness or surprise. Men will die, fighting for ground we should have conquered with ease. Because of you.”

“I’m sorry,” the baron whispered. “I—”

Adolfo turned and walked out the terrace door, walked into the storm. Fury grew inside him, and his desire to punish was more excessive than prudent.

It wasn’t just that men were going to die.
Wolfram
men were going to die. The army led by the Arktos barons was expendable. So was the army led by the Sylvalan barons from the east and south.

Distractions to split the enemy’s strength. A bonus if either army actually made it around the north or south ends of the Mother’s Hills and threatened the midlands. But
this
army came from Wolfram, came from
his
people. There would be losses. He knew that. Now there would be more. They knew he was coming, knew his army was aimed at Willowsbrook and the hills beyond Willowsbrook.

He didn’t know how Liam had managed to persuade the Fae to join the fight, and he didn’t like the fact that those creatures were suddenly paying attention to the human world. Bad enough that Ubel had encountered them the first time he’d gone to Breton, but if they were actually joining forces with the Sylvalan barons who dared to defy him ...

He shuddered. There had been no mention of a black-haired woman riding a dark horse. There had been no sign of
her
around Willowsbrook. With so much death in one place,
someone
would have seen the Gatherer if she had returned to this part of Sylvalan.

Perhaps he should change the place of attack anyway. Swing around the county Baron Liam ruled and strike somewhere a little farther north or south. It would force the human enemy to march fast to meet him before he reached the Mother’s Hills and began cleansing them of the foul magic that lived there. If the Fae had some alliance with Liam, they would lose interest if Willowsbrook wasn’t threatened.

He could turn the army away from Willowsbrook ... but the Sylvalan barons would see it as fear. They would think he was afraid of whatever unnatural allies that young bastard Liam was gathering, would gain strength and courage from misinterpreting his decision, and would pursue him more relentlessly because of it.

Soaked to the skin, Adolfo closed his eyes and lifted his face to the storm. The rain stung his skin, reeked of magic.

Magic.

He smiled.

He wouldn’t need to find an Old Place. The bitches were providing him with pools and pockets of magic he could drain for his own use, twist to his own will. He would still need a witch to create his finest gift, but he could use these pockets of magic to create the smaller gifts.

So he wouldn’t turn away. He would drive his army to Willowsbrook, would fight against the elements that had become the enemy’s weapon. He would capture a witch, soften her enough to remove any threat to himself or his men—and he would give Baron Liam and his allies a gift from out of a nightmare.