Shadows and Light

Chapter Fourteen

The Mother’s Hills were the most beautiful piece of Sylvalan Aiden had ever seen—and he wished with all his heart that he didn’t have to take one more step forward, that trying to find the Hunter was a foolish idea, that they could turn around and go back to Willowsbrook.

He was sure he could have convinced Lyrra to turn back and take the long northern roads around the hills. He might even have convinced himself if it wasn’t for the very last thing Breanna had said to them before they left the Old Place and entered the Mother’s Hills.

Merry meet, and merry part, and merry meet again.

The same words that had been in the story of how the current Hunter had ascended to his power. The only story the Fae told that had those words. Merry meet, and merry part, and merry meet again. Those words made it far more likely that the Hunter had known witches, or, at the very least, had heard of the wiccanfae and might be willing to help him and Lyrra convince the rest of the Fae to do something before it was too late to do anything.

But the power in the hills staggered him. It felt as if every leaf, every blade of grass, every pebble under his boots breathed in that power then breathed it out again.

Perhaps they did. Nuala had said this was the Old Place, the home of the House of Gaian.

A year ago, the Fae had thought the House of Gaian had been lost long ago. And it had been—to us. We didn’t know who the wiccanfae were or why their disappearance from an Old Place caused a shining road to close and a piece of Tir Alainn to vanish in the mist. A year ago, when we searched to find information about the Pillars of the World, we didn’t know any of those things. If we’d ever set foot in these hills, we would have understood all of them.

He brushed his fingers over the wooden disk Nuala had given to him. There was no magic in it, no protective spell he was aware of. It wasn’t any different from a family crest, the kind the human gentry seemed to take such stock in. But touching it made him feel easier. A family of witches had befriended two of the Fae. Surely that would mean something to those who lived here—if they actually met any of them.

Nuala had also warned them not to use the glamour while they were in the Mother’s Hills because the people here would be able to sense the magic in them and would not feel kindly toward the deception of a human mask.

He felt naked without that mask. It was safer to look like the people around you. Especially when you were in a place where your kind weren’t usually welcomed.

He looked up at Lyrra, who was riding her mare and leading the packhorse. “Do you want to rest for a while?”

Lyrra shook her head. They were in another stretch of woodland, and her focus was on the trees and bushes on her side of the road.

There was plenty of open land in the hills—meadows and pastureland where they’d seen animals in the distance, grazing. But when they came to another piece of the road where the trees formed a canopy overhead and they stepped from the light of a summer day into the shadows of the woods ...

Eyes watched them from those shadows. He saw no one, and he suspected if any of the Small Folk lived here, their magic was too pale for him to sense over the power in the land. But he felt those eyes watching the two of them.

Up ahead the road returned to open land and the bright dazzle of summer light.

Aiden quickened his pace, his reluctance to go forward warring with the desire to get into the open again. But he’d gone only a few steps when the mare pricked her ears and whinnied a soft greeting.

He froze, his eyes scanning the woods to find what had caught the mare’s attention, and he knew Lyrra was doing the same.

“Are you lost?” an amused voice asked.

Aiden didn’t see the man until he stepped away from the tree he’d been leaning against. Dressed in brown and summer green, he’d blended into the woods.

“You were expected a while ago, so we began to wonder if you’d gotten lost.” The man glanced at Lyrra, but the smile that followed that glance was directed at Aiden. “Then again, there are some pretty spots between here and Willowsbrook that are fine places to linger on a summer’s day.”

Aiden’s fingers brushed the wooden disk. “You were expecting us?”

“Cousin Breanna sent a message this morning. A man, a woman, and two horses coming our way from Willowsbrook.”

Since Lyrra had turned mute, Aiden had no choice but to be their spokesman. Besides, his curiosity was now a dreadful itch. “How could she send a message after we left and have it reach you before we did?” Could there have been a faster way? No, Breanna had escorted them to this road herself and said it was the clearest way and the easiest to follow.

The man smiled. “A whisper on the wind. A scent in the air. Not as precise as words on paper, but easy enough to read if you know how.” He whistled softly. A horse trotted out of the trees, its hooves making no sound on the road.

A Fae horse? Aiden wondered. What was a Fae horse doing here?

“There’s only a couple of miles to go before we reach the village,” the man said as he mounted his horse. “If you ride behind your lady, we’ll cover the distance faster, and you’ll have some time to rest before the evening meal.” That male smile flickered again.

When Aiden mounted behind Lyrra, she turned her head and whispered, “He thinks we’re late because we stopped to make love instead of traveling.”

Resting his mouth near her ear, he whispered back, “It’s a reasonable assumption.” And at a different time and in a different place, they might have done just that.

“How can we be late when we didn’t know we were expected?”

“Lyrra.” Aiden squeezed her waist lightly, well aware that the man who was now their escort might not be close enough to hear the words but was intelligent enough to guess at the conversation.

Their escort guided his horse over to them and gently tugged the packhorse’s lead out of Lyrra’s hand. “Why don’t I lead the packhorse,” he said, his eyes twinkling. “It looks like you two have your hands full as it is.”

“I— I— I—” Since that was the only sound Lyrra seemed capable of making, she subsided into silent fuming, her cheeks brilliantly colored by embarrassment or temper.

Aiden just closed his eyes, considered what the Muse could do when she finally regained her ability with words, and decided he didn’t want to think about it.

Their escort set his horse into an easy trot with the pack-horse trotting with him, leaving Lyrra and Aiden no choice but to follow.

After a few minutes, when their escort looked back to see what was keeping them, Aiden murmured to Lyrra, “I think it would be wise to be a bit more friendly.” Her only response was to urge the mare forward until they were riding beside the man.

There was one simple, common way of bringing a stranger one step closer to possibly being a friend. “I’m Aiden. And this is Lyrra, my wife.”

“Skelly,” the man replied.

Aiden waited for Lyrra to say something. Anything.

“I’m ... in a mood,” she finally said through gritted teeth.

Skelly laughed. “That’s a bit like saying the sun is warm, the rain is wet, and the wind can blow sweet or fierce. Men are no strangers to women’s moods. Even the Great Mother has them.” He glanced at her, considering.

Air whistled out from between her teeth.

“Men have moods, too,” Aiden said quickly.

“Oh, that they do, and, according to women, what we lack in variety we make up for in quantity.”

Lyrra grunted. It might have been a choked-back laugh. Aiden wasn’t sure.

“A few years ago,” Skelly said, “another fellow and I were both taken with the same fair lady, and she seemed to enjoy our company without giving a hint as to which one she preferred. Wicked thing to do to a young man’s heart—although my sweet granny would have said it wasn’t our hearts that found the young lady so compelling. Well, we did what young men do. We strutted and bragged. We swaggered and boasted. Annoyed the patience out of everyone around us. After this had been going on awhile, my sweet granny took us both over to a pasture where the rams were doing a bit of deciding among themselves about who might be courting the fair ewes. And she told us if we were going to act like rams in most ways, we could settle things by butting heads the same way the rams did, and leave the rest of the village out of it. ‘Twas a sobering moment, I can tell you, when the other fellow and I looked at each other and decided the fair lady really wasn’t worth a cracked head. And she wasn’t worth it. While we’d been busy strutting and bragging, what did she do but go and fall in love with a quiet merchant’s son who lived in another village. So the other fellow and I went to the tavern one night and drowned our mutual sorrow with a few too many tankards of ale. And I can tell you, those rams never had a headache like the ones we had the next morning.”

“And what about the fair lady?” Aiden asked.

“Oh, she married her quiet merchant’s son, and they’ve been happy ever since.”

Lyrra’s eyes narrowed as she turned her head to study Skelly’s face. “You made that up. All of it. From the fair lady to the rams, right down to your sweet granny.”

“Ah, no,” Skelly protested. “I’ve got a sweet granny. Indeed I do. And if I’d ever been so foolish, she would have done just what I’d said.”

“But you made it up,” Lyrra insisted.

Skelly smiled at her. “I’ve been known to tell a tale or two on a winter’s night. Or a summer one, if you’re counting. There are some among every kind of people who hold the tales close to their hearts. And whether the Muse whispers so that I have to listen close or shouts in my ear, I still listen. And I tell the tales that come to me.”

Lyrra looked as stunned as Aiden felt. Did Skelly know who they were? Did he know who Lyrra was? Had Breanna managed somehow to convey that in her message on the wind?

“So it’s glad I am that cousin Breanna set you on this path. Your packhorse carries instruments, and since the Muse hasn’t been whispering much lately, I’m hoping you have a few new stories and songs you’d be willing to share.”

Lyrra looked down at her mare’s neck. “The Muse has been whispering—and shouting for all the good it’s done— but perhaps those stories aren’t meant for you. Perhaps you don’t need them, and that’s why you don’t hear them.”

“Perhaps. But how can anyone know if a story is needed until it’s heard?” Skelly shrugged. Looked a little uncomfortable. “I’m thinking ... I apologize for teasing you. The stories about the Fae always make them seem so ...”

“So much like rams?” Aiden finished dryly.

“Well,” Skelly hedged. “Just more outspoken, you could say, about... earthier matters.”

What kind of stories did witches tell about the Fae? Aiden wondered. And how many tankards of ale would we have to tip before I could coax a couple out of him?

“Perhaps we could trade a story for a story,” Lyrra said, echoing Aiden’s thought.

Skelly grinned. “There’s some that will have to wait until the children are put to bed before they’re told.”

“I know a few of those.”

“I’ll hold you to that, storyteller,” Skelly said. “But we’re here, and it’s news the family will be wanting.”

“We’ve news to give,” Aiden said, realizing how much his mood had lightened in the past few minutes now that it was once more shadowed by what was happening in the east beyond the Mother’s Hills. And he hoped that, when the letters Nuala and Breanna had written to their kin and sent along with him were opened and read, there would be no one in the small village they rode into who would be grieving for lost kin.

They’d been given the guest room in a house that belonged to one of Nuala’s cousins. After they’d done what everyone seemed to assume the Fae did almost every waking minute, Lyrra sighed contentedly, stretched her arms over her head—and started giggling.

“What?” Aiden said, turning his head to look at her.

“This picture of two men in a pasture, pawing the ground with their feet before running toward each other to crack their heads together just popped into my head.”

“Are they naked men?” Aiden asked, rolling over to prop himself up on one elbow.

She looked thoughtful. “They should be, shouldn’t they? But I can’t quite seem to get them there.”

“I won’t say I’m disappointed.”

“You would never do anything so foolish, would you?”

“I think it’s safe to say I’ll never try to crack another man’s head with my own.” But he wondered if she’d think all the nights he’d worked on a tune, hoping the song would impress her, amounted to the same thing. “Besides,” he added, resting a hand on her belly, “you’re taken. And I’m taken. So the only heads we have to butt are each other’s.”

“I think some of the ladies were disappointed to see a ring on my left hand.”

“I think some of the men were equally disappointed.”

She smiled at him. “We’ll give them some good tunes tonight.”

“The best we have.”

She closed her eyes and drifted into sleep.

Aiden settled down and tried to sleep, but the songs danced through his mind.

They’d give their hosts the best songs they had—but not all of them would be joyful.

“It’s an imposition, and I know it,” Skelly said. “But the lad got so excited when he’d heard it was the Bard himself who was staying in the village overnight, it would have broken his heart to refuse him.”

Smiling, Aiden waved off the explanation. “I’ve listened to plenty of apprentice minstrels. I can listen to another.”

“Well, that’s just it, isn’t it?” Skelly said, looking uncomfortable. “He’s not an apprentice minstrel. Just a boy who loves to play music.”

The words pained him, but Aiden kept his smile in place. “That’s how we all begin.”

Maybe it had been a bit of head butting, as Lyrra so curtly put it when she found out, to tell Skelly that the Fae guesting in his village were the Bard and the Muse. It had certainly delighted him to see Skelly’s mouth fall open—and to watch the man’s eyes almost pop out of his head when he thought back to the conversation on the road and realized he’d been talking about the Muse to the Muse. Maybe it had been a need to let the witches know that the Fae had something to offer and didn’t come down the shining roads just for their own amusement.

Whatever the reason, by the time he’d finished the tankard of ale Skelly had poured for him at the evening meal, the news had run through the village, and the small gathering that would have been held in the tavern had turned into a large gathering in the village square. Benches and blankets were being carted out of people’s homes and set up to face the bench cushioned with folded blankets that he and Lyrra would use.

The wiccanfae might not think much of the Fae in general—and he wondered how different their welcome would have been if he and Lyrra hadn’t been wearing the tokens Nuala had given them—but it became clear that they were hungry for the gifts the Bard and the Muse could offer.

And that cut at him. He didn’t hoard his gift, didn’t keep it for just the Fae. He’d come across many a human musician who just needed the spark kindled a bit for it to catch fire and truly shine. But, until a year ago, he, like the rest of the Fae, had used the shining roads in the Old Places without thinking about the people who lived in those places—when he noticed them at all.

“If the crowd that’s gathering doesn’t make him nervous, let him play,” Aiden said.

“His nerves are dancing, and I’ll be surprised if he manages to get out more than a word here and there, but I’m grateful to you for giving him the chance.”

Don’t be grateful for what we should have done for the people who are the Pillars of the World. Just another thing we chose to forget along the way.

With a smile, Aiden turned away to help Lyrra set out the instruments. He settled on the bench and tuned the harp. By the time he was done, his half-healed fingers were so sore, he knew he wouldn’t be able to play.

The next time we come by this way, I’ll play for them.

He pondered that certainty for a moment and knew it was true. They would come back this way to share their songs and stories.

By the time everyone had assembled, it looked like every person within shouting distance was in the village square, crowded up as close as they could get in order to hear.

In order to keep the bargain Skelly had made, some of the musicians made their way to the front of the crowd, stood a little to one side of Aiden and Lyrra, and began to play.

The first tune was a familiar one. Aiden had heard variations of it in the Clan houses as well as in human taverns. The singer was nervous, and her voice tended to fade more often than not. But the applause from the crowd gave her and her companions more confidence, and her voice was steady for the next song.

The third song was one he’d never heard before, and he found himself leaning forward to catch the words and the tune, almost grinding his teeth when the singer kept faltering. It wasn’t until Lyrra slid over and gave him a hard jab with her elbow that he realized it was his own intense stare that was unnerving the singer. He lowered his eyes and, with effort, kept himself from leaping up and demanding that she sing it again. There was time. He’d corner her later.

After the musicians, Skelly stood up and told a story about his sweet granny, who was, apparently, the stern woman sitting on the other side of the square with her hands folded and her hair scraped back into a bun that must have made her scalp ache. It made Aiden’s scalp ache just looking at her. And the expression on her face was fierce enough to frighten any rational man.

Obviously, Skelly wasn’t a rational man, because he continued his story, gesturing now and then toward his sweet granny. When he finally got to the punch line, the first person to burst out laughing was his granny. The laughter transformed her face, and her eyes sparkled with mischief. As she pulled the pins out of her hair, she said, “Ah, Skelly. That story gets worse every time you tell it.”

Aiden heard Lyrra’s soft grunt, and he knew she, too, had taken the bait without realizing there was a hook in it. Seeing the grins on the villagers’ faces and how the old woman now looked like a sweet granny, he understood that the scraped-back hair and the fierce expression were props for Skelly’s story. Something he was sure everyone else in the village had known.

Then the boy came up with his small harp. After bowing to Aiden and Lyrra, he sat on the small bench Skelly brought over for him, settled himself, and began to play a song he wrote himself.

The boy had potential. Aiden felt his Bard’s gift swell with the desire to kindle that spark until it burned brightly.

The song, on other hand ...

When the boy finished, he lowered his head. The applause from the crowd was more a response to his courage than an indication of pleasure.

Then the boy raised his head, looked Aiden in the eyes, and said, “It’s not a good song.”

“No, it isn’t,” Aiden replied gently. “But it is a good first effort. With time and practice, you’ll write better songs.” He reached for his harp.

“Aiden,” Lyrra whispered fiercely. “You can’t play the harp yet. Your fingers aren’t healed.”

“They’re healed well enough for this song.” He set his fingers on the strings, suppressed a wince, plucked the first chord, and sang.

He watched the boy’s eyes widen in disbelief and disappointment—and something close to hope. He watched the adult faces in the crowd settle into a painfully polite expression. And he knew by the look on Lyrra’s face that she would, at that moment, gladly deny knowing him.

It was, if one wanted to be kind, a bad song. And he sang all five verses and their refrains.

When he was done, he handed the harp to Lyrra, flexed his painfully sore hands, and smiled at the boy. “That was the first song I ever wrote. I was about your age. But with time and practice, I’ve gotten a bit better.” He took a breath and began to sing “The Green Hills of Home.” It was a song about a traveler, alone and lonely, yearning for a place far away. It was a song about a man, alone and lonely, yearning for the lover who wasn’t there. He’d written it over the winter, when he’d been traveling and Lyrra had been at Bright-wood.

Her voice joined his, harmonizing. She didn’t even try to play the harp, so there was nothing but their voices, filled with the same remembered yearning.

When the last note faded, he watched people brush away tears—and felt the sting of tears in his own eyes.

Lyrra began plucking a simple tune on the harp, something that had no words. Aiden chose one of the whistles and joined her, letting the song flow through him. They used it as a transition song, when the audience needed time to settle again. Then he sang the song about the Black Coats—and watched the adult faces turn grim. Lyrra followed it with the poem about witches that he’d set to music. After that, they did a few romantic songs, gradually moving toward songs that were lighter and humorous. By the time they got to “The Mouse Song,” people were grinning and stifling chuckles— but a lot of them seemed to be watching something over Aiden’s shoulder.

That’s when he felt the presence of something moving softly behind him, coming closer and closer. He could almost feel the heat from a body, warm breath against his cheek. His nerves jumped, but he didn’t turn around. If there were some danger, surely the people watching would give him warning.

Lyrra glanced around. Her eyes widened. She choked back a laugh and kept on singing. But she couldn’t manage the annoyed tone she usually did with that song.

When they finished, Aiden slowly turned his head toward the warm breath just above his left shoulder. He stared at the black muzzle, the nostrils breathing in his scent. He looked up into a brown eye. He noticed the pricked ears. Slowly raising one hand, he rested it lightly on the muzzle, and whispered, “A dark horse. It’s a dark horse.”

“A herd of them came up from the south last summer,” Skelly’s granny said. “A few stayed in the southern end of the Mother’s Hills. The rest kept moving north. Some of them wintered here. When spring came, they continued heading north. All but this one.”

Aiden twisted on the bench to get a better look at the animal. The dark horses had disappeared after Ahern, the Lord of the Horse, died last summer. Fae horses were more intelligent than human horses, and the dark horses—Ahern’s “special” horses—were the most intelligent of all. None of the Fae had been able to find out what happened to them. Had Ahern given some last command that had sent them into the Mother’s Hills instead of going up one of the shining roads to Tir Alainn? Or had it been instinct that had driven them here?

“Who does he belong to?” Aiden asked.

“No one,” Skelly replied. “I’ve had a saddle on him a time or two, and he’s well trained. But he’s made it clear he wasn’t for any of us. We’ve had the impression he’s been waiting for something.”

“Sing another song, Bard,” Skelly’s granny said. “Sing another song.”

Lyrra quietly plucked the introduction to “Love’s Jewels.” Aiden sang, unable to turn away from the horse focused so intently on him. Seeing a dark horse, remembering Ahern, it made the events of last summer flood back, and by the time he’d reached the last line of the song, his throat was tight.

“I’m sorry,” Aiden said to the horse. “I can’t sing any more tonight.”

The horse snorted softly, a disappointed sound.

“There will be time enough to sing him another tune,” Skelly said, smiling.

Puzzled, Aiden turned toward the man.

“Looks to me like he’s chosen his rider,” Skelly said. “And you have a horse.”