Shadows and Light

see, Ashk. Only hear the messages Death sends.”
    Ashk walked over to a bench and sat down. After a moment, Morag joined her. They said nothing for a while. Odd how a silence between them never seemed too long or too short. It was simply a resting place.
    Finally, Morag said, “I’ll go with him tomorrow. Perhaps Death is waiting for him along the road and there’s nothing that can be done. But if he dies, I’ll always wonder if my being there would have made a difference.”
    “We’ll both go with him,” Ashk said. “I think it best that I talk to the folk in that village—just in case the merchant captain finds himself needing a safe harbor.”

Chapter Fourteen
    The Mother’s Hills were the most beautiful piece of Sylvalan Aiden had ever seen—and he wished with all his heart that he didn’t have to take one more step forward, that trying to find the Hunter was a foolish idea, that they could turn around and go back to Willowsbrook.
    He was sure he could have convinced Lyrra to turn back and take the long northern roads around the hills. He might even have convinced himself if it wasn’t for the very last thing Breanna had said to them before they left the Old Place and entered the Mother’s Hills.
    Merry meet, and merry part, and merry meet again.
    The same words that had been in the story of how the current Hunter had ascended to his power. The only story the Fae told that had those words. Merry meet, and merry part, and merry meet again. Those words made it far more likely that the Hunter had known witches, or, at the very least, had heard of the wiccanfae and might be willing to help him and Lyrra convince the rest of the Fae to do something before it was too late to do anything.
    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