Shadows and Light

shoulder.
    That’s when he felt the presence of something moving softly behind him, coming closer and closer. He could almost feel the heat from a body, warm breath against his cheek. His nerves jumped, but he didn’t turn around. If there were some danger, surely the people watching would give him warning.
    Lyrra glanced around. Her eyes widened. She choked back a laugh and kept on singing. But she couldn’
    t manage the annoyed tone she usually did with that song.
    When they finished, Aiden slowly turned his head toward the warm breath just above his left shoulder.
    He stared at the black muzzle, the nostrils breathing in his scent. He looked up into a brown eye. He noticed the pricked ears. Slowly raising one hand, he rested it lightly on the muzzle, and whispered, “A dark horse. It’s a dark horse.”
    “A herd of them came up from the south last summer,” Skelly’s granny said. “A few stayed in the southern end of the Mother’s Hills. The rest kept moving north. Some of them wintered here. When spring came, they continued heading north. All but this one.”
    Aiden twisted on the bench to get a better look at the animal. The dark horses had disappeared after Ahern, the Lord of the Horse, died last summer. Fae horses were more intelligent than human horses, and the dark horses—Ahern’s “special” horses—were the most intelligent of all. None of the Fae had been able to find out what happened to them. Had Ahern given some last command that had sent them into the Mother’s Hills instead of going up one of the shining roads to Tir Alainn? Or had it been instinct that had driven them here?
    “Who does he belong to?” Aiden asked.
    “No one,” Skelly replied. “I’ve had a saddle on him a time or two, and he’s well trained. But he’s made it clear he wasn’t for any of us. We’ve had the impression he’s been waiting for something.”
    “Sing another song, Bard,” Skelly’s granny said. “Sing another song.”
    Lyrra quietly plucked the introduction to “Love’s Jewels.” Aiden sang, unable to turn away from the horse focused so intently on him. Seeing a dark horse, remembering Ahern, it made the events of last summer flood back, and by the time he’d reached the last line of the song, his throat was tight.
    “I’m sorry,” Aiden said to the horse. “I can’t sing any more tonight.”
    The horse snorted softly, a disappointed sound.
    “There will be time enough to sing him another tune,” Skelly said, smiling.
    Puzzled, Aiden turned toward the man.
    “Looks to me like he’s chosen his rider,” Skelly said. “And you have a horse.”

Chapter Fifteen
    It was late afternoon when Morag, Ashk, the merchant captain, and his two men crested the low hill and looked down on the tidy village spilling out from the bottom of the hills toward the harbor and the deep blue of the sea. A little ways out, a string of islands formed a breakwall that protected the harbor from the sea’s moods.
    To Morag’s untrained eye, the harbor looked like the sort of place sailors would be keen to tuck their ships into when they weren’t out earning their living on the water. So why weren’t there more than two large ships moored to the docks? Why did all the boats but those two look like small fishing boats?
    And what was it about this tidy village that bothered her?
    She glanced at Mihail, saw the way he flinched while trying to pretend he didn’t notice that glance. He’d been tense and taciturn all through the journey back to this village. The tension had increased as they got closer—and the shadows continued to flicker across his face.
    She suppressed a sigh. She’d hoped those shadows would go away once they’d left Padrick’s estate, hoped that whatever trouble might draw Death to this man had been left behind. But the shadows had remained, no more constant than they’d been when she’d first seen them, but there nonetheless.
    She hoped the kindness that had guided him to take the books from the bookseller in the first place and then make the journey to Padrick’s house wouldn’t be repaid with pain.
    Ashk had ordered the footmen to put the boxes of books in the library. After her reluctant guests had gone to bed, she and Morag had gone back to the library and opened the boxes.
    Women’s names stamped on the books’ covers below the titles. All women. And only one copy of each work. But as the two of them opened the boxes, wiping away stray tears now and then, they’d