The House of Gaian Page 3

  Chapter 2

  waning moon

  You don’t have to do this.”

  Selena stopped packing the toiletries she’d set out on the dressing table to take with her on the journey, looked into the mirror, and met her younger sister’s woodland eyes. “Yes, I do.”

  “You don’t owe them anything.”

  Selena struggled not to smile. So fierce, so protective. Rhyann had always been that way, willing to hurl insults—or sticks and clods of dirt when words weren’t sufficient—in defense of a sister who was different, who wasn’t even a real sister by birth.

  What she wouldn’t tell this sister of the heart was that it was Rhyann’s loyalty and love that was as much a spur to making this journey as her own needs.

  “No, I don’t owe them anything.” Selena turned to face the young woman who had been a touchstone during the storms in her life. “I’m not doing this for the Fae, Rhyann. I’m doing it for myself. The moon calls. I can’t escape its pull any more than the sea can. There’s a power in me waiting to be released, filling me until it’s become everything. I could celebrate that rising alone, but I think I need to do this by the Fae’s customs. This time I need to stand among them.”

  “Why?” Rhyann asked, her voice worried and a little plaintive.

  Selena sat on the dressing table stool, then waited for Rhyann to settle on the corner of the bed. “Do you believe what the storyteller, Skelly, told us when he came traveling this way? Do you believe there are men called Inquisitors who have made it their work to kill witches and destroy the magic in the Old Places?”

  Rhyann nodded reluctantly. “It’s hard to deny what he said when the wind tells the same tale. Every puff of air that comes from the east brings sorrow and anger and fear—and a feeling of malevolence that rejoices in the sorrow…and especially in the fear.”

  “Do you believe it was the Fae Lord of Song, the Bard himself, who brought that news and the warnings to Skelly’s village?”

  Rhyann shrugged. “That makes no difference.”

  “Yes, it does.” Selena leaned forward. “It means there are some Fae who haven’t forgotten who and what the House of Gaian is. It means there are some Fae who care about more than themselves. If they have finally been stirred to care, can we sit in our villages here in the Mother’s Hills and do nothing?”

  “No one has said we’ll do nothing!” Rhyann snapped.

  Selena stared at her sister, no longer really seeing her. “I’ve been having dreams since the Solstice. They’ve been getting stronger and stronger. I’m standing in a meadow I’ve never seen before, and there, in the center of it, the grass is greener, richer. Somehow, I float above it, and I can make out the shape of a stag. When I float back down, my bare feet touch that spot, and I feel the vibration of thousands of feet marching in step. I breathe in and choke on the stench of blood and death. I walk a little ways away and drink from a pool of clear water—and gag on the thick taste of gore that chokes the stream that feeds the pool. And I hear a heartbeat, slow and big, and I know that the woods has come alive. It hears. It sees. And it’s coming toward the Mother’s Hills. Then I’m surrounded by moonlight, filled with moonlight, and I know I can’t stop whatever is in the woods from coming here, can’t change its coming. But I can become strong enough to meet it.”

  Rhyann tipped her head to one side. “What happens then?”

  “What?”

  “In the dream. What happens?”

  “I—” Selena pressed her lips together. Two shadow hound bitches racing through moon-bathed woods, racing toward a common enemy—a shadowy male figure standing in the center of a high, wide circle of female corpses. “I don’t remember.” She rubbed her hands over her face. Mother’s mercy, she was tired. “I have to go, Rhyann. Succeed or fail, I have to try. This power inside me won’t let me be unless I try.”

  “I’m going with you.”

  Selena let her hands fall into her lap. “No, you are not. I’ve already had this discussion with Father. I don’t need an escort. It’s better if I go alone.”

  “It’s better if we travel together for a while. Father won’t worry as much.”

  A chill ran through her, making her voice sharp. “What are you talking about? You’re not going anywhere.”

  “I’ve reached my majority,” Rhyann replied, equally sharp. “I can do whatever I want without asking anyone’s permission.” She sighed. “If we’re willing to believe that the Bard cares for more than the Fae, isn’t it possible that the Lady of Dreams also cares?”

  “What do my dreams have to do with your leaving?” Rhyann couldn’t leave. She couldn’t. Father was simply going to have to do something about it. He’d always been the more successful parent when it came to dealing with Rhyann.

  “Not because of your dreams,” Rhyann said reluctantly. “Because of mine.” After a long hesitation, she continued. “I dream of fire. Angry fire. Dreadful fire. I feel the heat of it, the pain of it. And then music is…silenced. Lost. Devoured by flame.” She rested her head against the bedpost. “That’s why I have to go. I don’t think I can stop the fire, but I can prevent the music from being silenced.”

  Rhyann closed her right hand into a loose fist. When she opened her hand, a small ball of golden light filled her palm. “Dreams and will,” she said softly. “Once upon a time, we made a whole world out of nothing more than dreams and will.”

  “And earth, water, fire, and air,” Selena said, just as softly.

  “Sunlight and moonbeams as the path between worlds. Do you remember the Crone whom Mother took us to see eight years ago, the summer I turned thirteen and was given my pentagram?”

  Selena reached up and brushed her fingers across her own pentagram. She’d also gone through a ceremony that formally acknowledged the start of a girl’s journey toward becoming a woman of power, a woman of the House of Gaian. And she remembered, at seventeen, standing with her mother and father while the Crones performed the ritual and presented the girls with the pentagrams that symbolized their bond to the Great Mother, that identified them as witches, as the Mother’s Daughters. She couldn’t say then, and couldn’t say now, if she’d been prouder on the day when she’d received her pentagram or on the day when she’d watched Rhyann receive hers.

  “I remember her,” Selena said. “I remember what she taught us that summer.”

  “So do I.

  Selena sighed. “Promise me you won’t travel east of the Mother’s Hills by yourself. Promise me that much.”

  “Will you promise the same?”

  Her temper flashed, and she felt the heat of it under her skin, but she held back the scalding reply she wanted to make. Rhyann’s temper could match hers any day, so what was the point of hot tempers now and hotter tears later when it was love holding the torch to the kindling?

  “I promise the same.”

  Rhyann stared at her in surprise. Then she exhaled gustily and stood up. “Let’s finish packing your saddlebags so I can take care of mine. We’ll need to get an early start tomorrow.”

  Selena stared at the ceiling, seeing nothing in the night-dark room, her heart pounding too hard, too fast.

  Just a dream, she thought as she crawled out of bed and stumbled toward the wash basin. Her hands shook as she poured water from the pitcher into the basin. Just a dream, brought on because I know Rhyann isn’t going to stay home where it’s safe. Or as safe as any place can be these days.

  She stripped off her sweat-soaked nightgown, then twisted her hair to hold it back long enough to splash some water on her face. She dunked a washcloth in the basin, rung it out, and rubbed it over her body. The water didn’t make her feel as chilly as the sweat drying on her skin, and she imagined washing off the scum of the dream along with the sweat.

  Then she focused her thoughts and sent a flicker of the Mother’s branch of fire to the candle sitting on the dressing table. The wick lit, and the single flame softened the dark into varying shades of gray.

  Moving slowly, sh
e went to the dressing table, sank down on the stool, and stared into the mirror.

  The face that stared back at her wasn’t human. Had never looked human. Her hair was a pure black, not the dark brown that was common, and her eyes were a gray-green instead of the brown-flecked green that was the dominant color among the people who came from the House of Gaian. Neither of those things would have drawn much attention to her, but the face…People looked at her and saw one of the Fae. And she was. May the Mother help her, she was as much Fae as she was witch, the product of an affair between a Fae lady and a feckless young man. The Fae lady hadn’t wanted a child with a mixed heritage, and the feckless young man had turned to his married older brother for help with the babe the lady had left with him before disappearing from all of their lives. Just like the young man, who asked his brother’s wife to watch the babe one afternoon and never came back. A year later, he sent a brief letter, letting his brother know he was well. He didn’t ask about or mention the child, and they never heard from him again.

  There had been times when other children had teased her unkindly about her pointed ears or the shape of her face, when she’d wanted to see the two people whose mating had produced her—to shout and rage and scream at them for being so careless and uncaring. In the end, it hadn’t mattered. Not because of the man, her uncle by blood and father by heart, who had taught her to ride as well as to dance. Not because of the woman he’d married, who had shown her with hugs and scolds that she was a beloved daughter—and taught her what it meant to be a witch. In the end, it hadn’t mattered because of Rhyann, the little sister who adored her. Rhyann, who had proudly come into her room one day to show her the triangle caps she’d made out of scraps of material and sewed together with clumsy, childish stitches so that she could have pointy ears, too. Rhyann who, the first time Selena had inadvertently changed into her other form, had carried her terrified, furry sister home—and then stayed with Selena for all the hours it had taken their parents to calm her down enough to find the key inside herself that changed her back into a child. And it was Rhyann, when needs seemed to tangle her up until she wasn’t sure anymore who she was, who would always tell her fiercely, “You’re a witch. You’re always a witch, one of the Mother’s Daughters.”

  Always, forever a witch. A rare and powerful witch, who could wield the power of the Mother’s branches—earth, air, water, and fire—in equal measure. There were many in the Mother’s Hills who were gifted with all four branches, but most of them had one primary branch and a lesser ability with the other three. But for her, all four were primary and flowed from her as easily as she breathed. In that, she and Rhyann were true sisters.

  But she was also a Lady of the Moon, something she hadn’t known until eight years ago. The Crone who had taught her and Rhyann some of the oldest magic known to the House of Gaian had recognized that part of her. The old woman had refused to say how she knew what she did about the Fae—and the Ladies of the Moon and the Lady of the Moon in particular—but that knowledge helped Selena understand the part of herself that had felt like a stranger living inside her skin.

  Now that part of her heritage was rising, calling, commanding her to answer. So she would follow the call to the place where the other Ladies of the Moon would gather, and she would stand as a challenger to find out if she was strong enough to ascend and become the Lady of the Moon—and the Huntress.

  She stood up, stepped away from the dressing table, and shifted into her other form. Then she put her front paws on the stool in order to look into the mirror again.

  Shadow hound. A deadly predator the Ladies of the Moon used for their Wild Hunts.

  Selena shifted again, stared into the mirror, her hands braced on the stool.

  Two shadow hound bitches racing through moon-bathed woods, racing toward a common enemy.

  Who was the second bitch? Was one of the Sleep Sisters just playing with her, haunting her with dreams to weaken her for the challenge ahead, or was this a gift from the Lady of Dreams herself, showing her an ally against a common foe? She would need an ally, especially if she won this challenge. Who was the second bitch?

  Cold again, despite the warm summer night, Selena blew out the candle and returned to bed to huddle under the covers.

  A shadowy male figure standing in the center of a high, wide circle of female corpses.

  Yes, she needed an ally, because tonight, in that circle of corpses, she’d seen her mother—and Rhyann.

  Chapter 3

  waning moon

  Breanna grumbled as she gathered up her bow and quiver of arrows from the corner of her wardrobe. She continued to grumble as she walked the corridors of her family’s manor house to reach the kitchen door.

  The trouble with men was that they saw the world in a way that was too rational to be wrong…but also just wasn’t quite right. And a man who was a baron as well as an older brother was the most stubborn, ornery creature in the world—especially when his argument that she should know how to handle weapons was supported by a Fae Lord who was the Lord of the Hawks.

  “The featherheads,” Breanna muttered as she opened the kitchen door and stood on the threshold. She looked down at Idjit, who was laying to one side of the doorway, busily gnawing on a soup bone Glynis, their housekeeper, must have given him. “They’re both featherheads, even if only one of them has the ability to change into a form with actual feathers. And where are they? Tell me that. They’re both so keen for me to interrupt my day, and then they don’t even show up. They’re probably off doing important man things—like molting in the case of the Fae featherhead. Or doing whatever barons do as an excuse for being late to an appointment they made.”

  The small black dog rolled his eyes, waved his tail, and kept gnawing on the soup bone.

  “You’re no help,” Breanna said sourly. “Of course you’re not. You’re male, too.”

  She closed the kitchen door and headed across the extensive sweep of grass that was the manor house’s back lawn. Since the cousins who had escaped from the eastern part of Sylvalan had arrived earlier that summer to stay with her family at Willowsbrook’s Old Place, there were too many animals around the stables and paddocks and too many children running and playing on the back lawn to set up practice targets in those areas. So Clay, who was in charge of the horses, had set up bales of hay near the kitchen garden.

  It wasn’t that she objected to target practice. In truth, she often did it as a way to settle her thoughts and regain the balance between mind and body. What she objected to was the assumption that she needed target practice. Mother’s tits! She could shoot as well as most men, had been bringing home game for several years now. Even Clay had told Liam and Falco that she didn’t need to learn how to hit a target. Had the Baron of Willowsbrook and the Lord of the Hawks listened? No, they had not. The featherheads.

  Breanna stopped and looked at the men and older boys who were cleaning out stables or grooming horses, looked at the women hanging wash on the lines, looked at the youngsters playing some kind of game on the lawn, looked beyond her kin to the woods that bordered the lawn and thought of the Small Folk who lived there. She pulled her shoulders back, trying to ease the tension in her chest.

  “A copper for your thoughts.”

  Breanna turned toward the voice. Her cousin Fiona stood a few feet away, her hands filled with another bow and quiver of arrows.

  “You’re doing target practice too?” Breanna asked.

  Fiona shrugged.

  Breanna turned away, focusing on the woods again. “Do no harm,” she said quietly. “That’s the witch’s creed. There are good reasons for that creed, good reasons why we should use the power within us only to help, to heal, to maintain the balance between the Great Mother and all the creatures who live on her bounty.”

  “And to protect?” Fiona suggested softly.

  “And to protect.” Breanna sighed. “I keep thinking that I don’t need to learn to use weapons against other people, that I already have a weapon inside me
more destructive than anything a man could create. Then I wonder if all the witches who have died at the hands of the Inquisitors had thought the same way and learned their error too late. Or had they been so hobbled by our creed that they hadn’t even tried?”

  “Could you kill a man, Breanna?”

  She felt something settle inside her, something that had been haunting her sleep lately. She turned to face her cousin. “Yes, I could. If that’s what it took to protect my family or the Old Place or the Small Folk…yes, I could.” She lifted the hand that held the bow. “It would be easier to do that using a weapon made by human hands than break the creed I live by and use the power inside me to do harm. But I would do that, too, if there was no other choice.”

  “We’re of one mind about this,” Fiona said. “I’ve lost my mother and my grandmother. My father, too. And too many aunts and uncles. We’re a large, sprawling family. Or we were. Sometimes I think we should have fought back, should have stood up to the baron when he started making decrees that took away so much. But we couldn’t have done that without doing harm, and the elders held by the creed—and didn’t understand the cost until it was too late for them to do anything but save those they could by sacrificing themselves.”

  “It was more complicated than that,” Breanna said gently.

  Fiona sighed. “I know. But some days it’s easier to blame those I loved for dying to save the rest of us than to admit that breaking the creed wouldn’t have made any difference. Not then. Not there. The Inquisitors already controlled the baron, and the baron controlled the people. What good would it have done to wither the crops in the fields or make the wells dry? All that would have done is hurt the common folk and prove witches are the evil creatures the Black Coats accuse us of being.”

  “You don’t know the elders are dead.”

  “Breanna.”

  Fiona’s voice held so much knowledge and pain. But not acceptance. If the Inquisitors rode into this Old Place, at least some of the witches here would use everything they could summon to fight back.