The House Of Gaian

 

     
     

     
     
    Also by Anne Bishop
    The Black Jewels series
    Daughter of the Blood
    Heir to the Shadows
    Queen of the Darkness
    The Invisible Ring
     
     
    The Tir Alainn series

    Pillars of the World
    Shadows and Light
    THE HOUSE OF GAIAN
    Anne Bishop
    A ROC BOOK
    ROC
    Published by New American Library, a division of
    Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
    Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England
    Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcom Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2
    Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, Cnr Rosedale and Airborne Roads, Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England First published by Roc, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
    First Printing, October 2003
    10 987654321
    Copyright © Anne Bishop, 2003 All rights reserved
    Cover art by Duane Myers
    REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA
    Printed in the United States of America
    Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
     
    PUBLISHER’S NOTE

    This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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    For Jennifer Jackson
     
    and Laura Anne Gilman
    ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
    My thanks to Blair Boone for continuing to be my first reader; Kandra and Debra Dixon for being beta readers; Nadine Fallacaro for information about things medical; Kristen Britain, Pat York, Paul Butler, Jim Hetley, Katherine Lawrence, Uriel, and Lisa Spangenberg for their thoughts and suggestions about weapons; and Pat and Bill Feidner for their continued support and encouragement.

 

     
     

Chapter 1

 

     
     

     
    waning moon
     
    Ashk, Bretonwood’s Lady of the Woods, wandered the familiar woodland trails of her Clan’s Old Place. Neall, distant kin to her despite his human face, walked beside her. She saw questions in his blue eyes, but he kept the silence she’d held since she came to his cottage early that morning and asked him to accompany her.
    These trails knew her tread, both her human feet and the pads of the shadow hound that was her other form. And she knew the trails. She didn’t want to leave Bretonwood, but she had to, had to keep her heart and mind on the task ahead. Whether or not she could do that depended on the young man who walked beside her.
    At the end of the trail, she hesitated a moment before walking into the sunlit meadow. A favorite place. A special place where her grandfather had taken her to play and to learn to be a Lady of the Woods—and, later, although she wasn’t aware of it at the time, to be the Green Lord... and the Hunter. He was buried in that meadow, right where he’d fallen after her arrow pierced his heart. A swift death that honored the old Lord of the Woods rather than the lingering, soul-wasting death that the nighthunter bites would have caused him. The Fae put up no markers like humans did, and Ari, Neall’s wife and Bretonwood’s witch, had worked her magic with care, so there was no mound of dirt, no disturbance in the grass and