Shadows and Light

to warn people about the Black Coats, the Inquisitors—and traveling up the shining roads to tell the Fae Clans that the witches who lived in the Old Places were the descendants of the House of Gaian, and their deaths by the Inquisitors’ hands were the reason pieces of Tir Alainn were disappearing.
    It was physically wearing to stay in the human world and travel from place to place day after day, singing the songs and telling the stories. It was emotionally wearing to pass through the Veil that separated the human world from Tir Alainn to visit the Fae Clans and see the stubborn faces and hear the dismissive remarks when she and Aiden tried to tell them the witches needed the Fae’s protection.
    “Drink your tea while it’s still warm,” Aiden said. He bolted the door, then crossed the small room to carefully set his harp beside the table and two chairs placed beneath the window. He undressed with his back to her, leaving his shirt on until he got into bed beside her and was covered below the waist.
    Disturbed by this new modesty of his, Lyrra sipped her tea and ate a slice of buttered bread. They had been lovers on and off for several years, whenever they were both staying with the same Clan in Tir Alainn and during the times when they’d made brief journeys together in Sylvalan. Then, he’d been brash, arrogant, sure of his welcome as a lover. And he hadn’t thought twice about undressing in front of her.
    She handed him the cup to share the tea and insisted he have the other slice of bread and half the cake.
    She was hungry enough to eat it all, but so was he, despite a hearty dinner they’d been given as part of the fee for their performance. There had been too many lean meals lately.
    When they finished, she put the cup and plate on the bedside table, next to her brush and the candle she’
    d lit when she’d come up to the room—and decided it was time to find out what had been preying on his mind lately. It was something more than the loss of another piece of Tir Alainn, something more than the loss of another Daughter from the House of Gaian.
    “Aiden, what’s been troubling you these past few days?”

    He stripped off his shirt, tossed it on one of the chairs, then lay back. He tucked one arm under his head.
    The other lay across his belly. “What isn’t troubling me these days? I’ve spent almost a year talking and talking and talking—and no one has listened. The Old Places are still unprotected, the witches are still unprotected, and the Fae sit above it all in Tir Alainn, expecting everything to go on as it has for so long without making any effort to make sure it does go on. The foul thoughts and feelings the Inquisitors brought with them from Wolfram last year haven’t been cleansed from people’s hearts and minds. If anything, those thoughts are spreading, slowly seeping into other parts of Sylvalan. Those words are still poisoning men’s hearts against the Great Mother, women in general, and the witches in particular.”
    “That’s been true for months,” Lyrra said softly. “But there’s more now.”
    “It’s nothing.”
    “Yes,” she said dryly, “and pigs can fly.”
    He gave her a shadow of one of his old smiles. “Perhaps they can in some far-off land beyond the sea.”
    Lyrra stiffened, recognizing it was her heart more than her pride that was stung. She had asked a serious question, and had, by the asking, offered to share whatever troubled him. And he was going to brush that offer aside as if it were whimsy. Very well, then.
    She leaned over to blow out the candle when he said, “It wears on a man when fear is his constant companion.”
    She turned to look at him. “You’ve been afraid you might meet up with the Inquisitors?”
    “No. I’ve been afraid you would.”
    She didn’t know what to say. Pleasure at hearing he cared lifted her heart. Fear of the things she’d heard Inquisitors did to women accused of being witches churned in her belly, making her feel a little sick.
    “Late last summer, I visited a Clan about half a day’s ride east of here,” Aiden said, not looking at her. “
    They wouldn’t listen to me. There were two witches living in a small cottage in the Old Place that anchored that Clan’s territory to the human world, and the Fae wouldn’t listen to me when I explained the danger that had crept into Sylvalan because of the Inquisitors. When I came back this way on my way to Brightwood, men were in the Old Place cutting down