The House Of Gaian

Ashk.”
    The bards, storytellers, the Ladies of the Moon, and their escorts stood between Selena and the stables where Mistrunner pawed the ground. Any moment now, he would charge through the people to reach her.
    “Easy,” she said.
    His only response was an angry snort, but he stopped pawing the ground.
    The three bards took a step forward, more pale and frightened than when she’d summoned the storm.
    “Huntress,” one bard said, raising his hand in a plea. “You’re leaving Tir Alainn?”
    “I am,” Selena replied.
    “But... how will we let you know that the Clans have obeyed your command? How will we send word?
    And ... when the huntsmen come down to the human world, where are they supposed to go ?”
    “And where is the Bard supposed to meet you?” another bard asked. “We’ve already sent word that you want to see him, but we couldn’t tell him where.”
    Wondering how coherent a message three frightened bards could shape, Selena said, “He can find me at the Old Place closest to Willowsbrook. As for the huntsmen ...” She thought a moment. There would be losses when the Inquisitors’ army marched across Sylvalan. Villages would burn. People would die. She wasn’t going to be able to prevent all of it. She wasn’t going to be able to prevent the deaths of any witches in the path of that army. But if she could block the Black Coats enough, she could force them onto a battleground that could not only be defended but could defend itself. There were reasons why no one with intent to do harm dared enter the Mother’s Hills. “The Fae huntsmen should gather at the northern and southern ends of the Mother’s Hills, blocking the way into the midlands. Hold those roads and we can keep them out.”
    “Block the roads and it’s easy enough to go cross-country,” one of Gwynith’s escorts said.
    “Easy for the Fae,” Selena agreed. “But the Inquisitors and the eastern barons will have a human army.
    They’ll use the roads. It’s too easy to get lost in unfamiliar land. And angry land can be quite dangerous to travel through,” she added softly.
    She felt the tension crackle in the air as the people in front of her realized once again that the earth magic they’d thought of as useful but harmless could be deadly.

    “The western coast is already being protected,” she continued, looking at Gwynith, who nodded. “The Clans nearest the midland coastline should be on guard for any ships that enter the harbors there. If the Inquisitors can’t come in by land, they may try to come in by sea.”
    One of the other western Ladies lifted her hand. “I come from a Clan near the coast, almost at the border between the midlands and the west. Any ships trying to reach the west would have to pass between the mainland and Selkie Island. If the Lord of the Selkies was warned ... Well, it’s been said that no ship passes Selkie Island unless it pleases Lord Murtagh to allow it to pass.”
    “Will you send the message to him?” Selena asked.
    “I will, Lady.”
    “Huntress,” Gwynith’s escort said, “if the coast is blocked as well as the north and south ... Well, I’d try to drive an army right through the center.”
    “Exactly,” Selena agreed.
    “But... the Mother’s Hills would be in the way.”
    “Yes, the Mother’s Hills—and the House of Gaian—would be in the way.”
    They all stared at her.
    “You would send the Black Coats’ army against your own people?” Gwynith asked, sounding horrified.
    Selena smiled. “They have to reach the Mother’s Hills first.”
    “Roads,” Gwynith’s escort said.
    Selena opened the branch of water, found the well near the stables, and called a thin stream of water to her. The water found its way up through the earth near her left foot. “Earth and water. Mud.” Calling air and earth, she circled her right hand until a swirling wind picked up some earth and rose waist high. “
    Earth and air.”
    She wanted to laugh at the way they stared at her little dust whirl. When they were children, she and Rhyann used to make these little whirls and have races—until the day the dust whirls got away from them and collided with the laundry their mother had just hung out to dry.
    She banked the connection with water so the water would remain in the well. She slowly banked the wind until the earth it had gathered once more rested with the rest of the land.
    “You all have tasks to perform,” she said. “And so do I.”
    Before Gwynith could