Shadows and Light

the day to you.” Neall remained wary—until his eyes dropped to the lacings on Morphia’s bodice.
    “Why do you have a feather in your lacings?” Neall asked.
    Morphia glanced down—and blushed an interesting shade of crimson. She plucked the feather out of the lacings, and muttered, “I hope it wasn’t one he needed.”
    Neall’s lips twitched. “He?”
    Morphia nervously smoothed the feather, then stuck it back in the lacings. “It’s a long story.”
    “Which my sister will be glad to share—”
    “No, I won’t.”
    “—after the two of you have gotten a little rest,” Morag said.
    Morphia muttered. But she went over to the table and got a good grip on Ari’s arm to persuade her to get up.
    Morag walked up to Neall and smiled. She could tell by his expression that he remembered quite well the last time he’d tried—unsuccessfully—to deal with the two sisters. So it wasn’t so hard as it might have been to coax Neall and Ari to lie down for a little while. Especially since Neall, at least, realized he was going to sleep and his choices were the bed or the floor.
    A light brush of Morphia’s fingers once they were settled on the bed was all it took for the two of them to fall sound asleep.
    Morag grabbed Merle by the scruff and dragged the whining shadow hound outside. “No,” she said firmly. “You are not climbing up on that bed with them until you’ve had a bath.”
    The whines increased.
    “Hush!” Not that his whines were going to wake Ari or Neall, but there was no reason for the rest of them to have to listen to Merle’s opinions and complaints. She closed the bottom of the kitchen door and watched Merle lope over to Glenn, probably hoping the man might have a different opinion.
    Glenn looked at Morag. Morag looked at Glenn.
    “Come along, laddy-boy,” Glenn said. “We’ll get you cleaned up.”
    Merle hung his head, but he followed Glenn back to the stables.
    Morag turned back to the cottage. Morphia stood inside, watching her.
    “What brought you to Bretonwood?” Morag asked.
    “I came looking for you,” Morphia replied. “I’d rather be with my sister than with the rest of the Fae.”
    Had it come to that? “Morphia ...”
    Morphia shook her head. “Ashk says the Fae in the west are different.”
    “Yes,” Morag said softly, “they are.”
    “I’m guesting at the Clan house, but when word came that a healer was needed here ... The healer was already occupied, so I came instead.”
    “You were what they needed.” Morag hesitated. “Can you stay with them for a little while? There’s something I need to do.”
    “I can stay.”
    Morag walked to the kitchen garden, where her dark horse waited. She stopped when the older huntsman approached her.
    “We’ll take care of the bodies,” he said.
    “I don’t want them on her land. I don’t want them near her. Not even as corpses.”
    He hesitated. “There is a place, deep in the woods, some distance from the Clan house. There are several places in the woods where we give our dead back to the Mother, but this place ... There is good and bad in every people, Lady Morag. Wishing it wasn’t so doesn’t change that it is. So there is a place in the woods where we sometimes bury one of our own. Nothing will grow there but thorns and thistles.
    It’s a cold place, even in bright sunlight.”
    “That will do.” A place where even daylight was shadowed. Yes, that would do for the Black Coats.
    Shadows.

    “Something else,” Morag said, resting her hand on the huntsman’s arm. “Warn Ashk. Warn the Clan to be wary of the shadows in the woods. If the Inquisitors were here long enough, they could have drawn on the power in the Old Place and twisted it to create nighthunters.”
    “Nighthunters?”
    “Creatures the Mother never would have created. They devour flesh and spirit.”
    The huntsman gave her a long look. “I’ll tell Ashk. If these creatures are here, we’ll rid our land of them.”
    Morag nodded. Having seen nighthunters, she didn’t think it would be that easy to destroy them, but she wasn’t skilled with a bow, so perhaps he had good reason to be confident of the Fae’s ability to cleanse the creatures from Bretonwood.
    She mounted her dark horse, gathered the Inquisitors’ ghosts, and rode away. She felt uneasy about traveling along the deeper trails in the woods, but was unwilling to take the road up to the Shadowed Veil until she was away from the land that belonged to Neall and