Shadows and Light

jerked back, feeling like a child who’d been caught trying to snitch something from the kitchen.
    “You know better than that,” Morag said loudly, angrily. She stood up and tossed the cloth back over the bread, covering it. “Lady Ashk is always willing to share, but it’s custom that she gets the first slice.
    No one is going to touch this until she gets home.”
    Ashk stared at Morag. Was the woman still drunk? Had she been in the sun too long today on the journey back from the harbor? Was she having some kind of brain seizure, too, that she couldn’t remember who she’d just spent the day with?
    A little stunned, Ashk looked at the men in the pony cart—and saw the way Barry’s kinsman, wide-eyed and pale, looked at Morag before slapping the reins across the pony’s back and returning to Barry’s farm with more speed than prudence.
    As soon as the cart was out of sight, Ashk stood up, pushing the bench hard enough to knock it over. “
    What’s wrong with you?” The queer fury in Morag’s dark eyes made her uneasy.
    “There are shadows on his face,” Morag snapped. “They weren’t there when he arrived. They weren’t there until he ate the bread.”
    A chill brushed over Ashk. She looked at the covered loaf of bread.
    “He knows who I am,” Morag continued. “He knows what I am. That’s why he ate it. So I would see what only I would see. And warn you.”
    The chill was still there, but it had turned into calm ice. Ashk recognized the feeling. Accepted it.
    Understood she was about to walk in the darker shadows of the woods. “He’ll die?”
    Morag didn’t answer the question. “And that other man? I doubt he’s any kin. He, too, recognized what I was—and he has reason to fear me. I think he’s one of the Black Coats.”
    Ashk didn’t ask why Morag thought that—especially when Morag half turned, and whispered, “Ari.”
    “Go,” Ashk said. “You take care of Ari and Neall. I’ll take care of Barry’s ‘kinsman.’ ”
    Morag changed into her raven form and flew away, heading toward Ari and Neall’s cottage. Her dark horse galloped after her.
    Once more, the Fae had dropped their work and hurried toward her. She wondered if they saw the same queer fury in her eyes that she’d seen in Morag’s. She picked up the bread, shoved it into a woman
    ’s hands. “Lock that up for the moment. Don’t allow anyone to eat it, not so much as a crumb.” She pointed at two other women. “Gather the children and get them into the Clan house. None of them go out until I give consent. Get the elders inside, too.” She pointed to others, giving orders. “Take some men.
    One group goes to Ari’s cottage to help Morag; the other goes to the manor house. Warn them there may be Black Coats among us. Two of you go on to the village. Tell the magistrate so he can call out his guards. Some of the youths can go out to the tenant farms and give the warning.“
    “Will you sound the horn?” one of the men asked.
    If she did, it would be heard far beyond the boundaries of the Clan house. But would the Inquisitors know what it meant? “Bring it.”
    A youth ran to the Clan house while some of the men and women changed into their other shapes and ran or flew to Barry’s farm or headed out for the other farms to give the warning about the Inquisitors’
    presence. Others quickly saddled horses, gathered up bows and crossbows.
    Ashk mounted her horse, took her bow and the quiver full of arrows from one of her huntsmen. The youth returned from the Clan house, held up the horn.
    In anyone else’s hands, it was just a hunting horn. In the hands of a Lord or Lady of the Woods, its notes could command anything and everything that belonged to the woods.
    Ashk took a deep breath to steady herself. Grandfather, stay away. Don’t answer the horn. A futile wish, but she made it anyway as she drew upon the gift that was hers and put the horn to her lips.
    Flocks of birds exploded from the trees, taking wild flight, obeying commands as old as the woods.
    Some circled the Clan house. Others headed for Barry’s farm.
    As she blew the horn again, summoning, commanding, she felt the pulse of life responding to it. The woods had come alive. And the woods were angry.
    She attached the horn to a ring on her saddle, pressed her heels into her horse’s sides, and galloped toward Barry’s farm. She didn’t know if there was any way to save the man, but she wouldn’t let the Black Coats have his