Shadows and Light

Chapter Nineteen

Struggling to push away memories of the previous night, Ashk stared at the sunlit meadow. It was one of her favorite places, the place where her grandfather had taught her, trained her, played with her. She wanted to walk in the sunlight, feel the heat of it seep through her skin all the way to her cold bones. She wanted to follow the trail that led to the small pool where she had met Padrick on a Summer Moon night years ago. She wanted to soak in that water until she felt clean again—and she wondered if she ever would feel clean again. If she went there, would the blood and the pain seep into the stones around the pool? Would it settle on the bottom like some kind of emotional slime?

Have you nothing to say about what I’ve done here, Gatherer?

I’ve seen worse things done, and they were done by an Inquisitor’s hand.

Last night, she had used their own tools against them— not with any skill, since she could only guess at the purpose of many of those pieces of metal, but she had used them while the Fae males who had brought the Black Coats to that thorny, barren place—and the Fae who had joined them— watched in silence and listened to the Black Coats spew out answers to every question she asked, listened to them beg and plead for the next caress of pain to stop.

She wondered how many witches had begged and pleaded for the suffering to end—and how many times the Black Coats had answered those pleas with more pain.

In the end, she’d used her knife because it was the weapon that felt comfortable in her hand, and she dressed the Black Coats as she would have dressed a deer—but without the respect she felt for a deer whose flesh would feed her people and without the mercy of a swift, clean death before her knife sliced through those human bellies. Their blood splashed her. Their screams filled her ears until there was no other sound. She heard the screams even after she stood over silent corpses.

When she looked at her men, they looked back at her fearfully, even the ones who were predators in their other forms.

Not even a wolf was safe against a shadow hound, and now they’d seen that side of her while she was still in her human form.

Then, as the sky began to lighten with the dawn, Morag road into that thorny, barren place.

Have you nothing to say about what I’ve done here, Gatherer?

I’ve seen worse things done, and they were done by an Inquisitor’s hand.

Morag gathered all the ghosts in that place and took them up the road that led to the Shadowed Veil and the Summer-land beyond.

Death’s Mistress didn’t fear shadow hounds.

Ashk blinked her eyes several times. It was just looking at the sunlight that made them wet. Just the sunlight.

It would be some time before she could walk in the light again. The Black Coats had created the foul, soul-eating creatures called nighthunters, and those things were growing somewhere in the woods. No, she couldn’t walk in the light while her people were in danger.

She turned her back on the meadow and looked at the men standing in the shadows of the woods, the men who had followed her here, waiting for their orders.

“Send word through the minstrels and the storytellers,” Ashk said. “They’ll make sure everyone hears the warnings. Send it swiftly. It must reach the witches and the barons as well as the Clans.”

“What should the minstrels and storytellers say?” one of the huntsmen asked.

“They should give warning about the nighthunters. One of the Black Coats, the one who led the other five, got away. He could create more of those soul-eating creatures in other places while he flees the west. People need to be careful.”

“Is there anything else?” the huntsman asked.

“No stranger is welcome in the west, and if any come, no one is to talk to them about witches or the House of Gaian. No one. If any strangers want answers, they can come to me.” It hurt, knowing what her next words might cost. “And if any strangers who come into the west are reluctant to explain to the Fae why they have come among us... kill them.”