Shadows and Light (26 page)

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 packhorse 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.