The Pillars Of The World

have to find someone else to anchor your road. I’m leaving.”
    “How can you be so selfish?” Dianna shouted. “If you walk away from here, my home will cease to exist, my entire Clan will die. Will you have the deaths of that many people on your shoulders?”
    “You can’t lay that on me,” Ari shouted back. “I have nothing to do with Tir Alainn or the Fae. I’m a witch. My family has kept this land for generations. Now it’s time for someone else to look after it. Let the Fae look after it.”
    “I thought we were friends.”
    Ari just stared at her. “How convenient that you decided to become friends at this particular time. Where were you before now? Where were you during all the years before now?”
    “We didn’t know—”

    “That’s right! You didn’t know! You didn’t know someone besides yourself might be important, might have wants, needs, dreams. I’m going to have my own life, and I’m going to have it with Neall.”
    “Why would you want someone like him when you can have a man like Lucian?”
    “ Because I don’t want worthless trinkets ! I want my daughter to have a father. I want to have a lover who will also be a partner.”
    “Ari—”
    “I looked in my family’s jewelry box today. And do you know what I saw, Dianna? Trinkets. Lots of trinkets. That’s all we’ve ever been worth to anyone. Well, I’m not going to settle for trinkets .”
    “You can’t leave here.”
    “You can’t stop me.”
    Oh, yes, I can . Furious, but not knowing what else to do for the moment, Dianna walked away.
     

 

     
     

Chapter Twenty-seven

 

     
     

     
    Adolfo carefully refolded the letter. Baron Prescott had gained the land and timber he’d craved easily enough. Too easily. The witch who had owned the land had been old and weak. He had barely taken her through the first level of cleansing torture before she broke and confessed to being the cause of all the village’s ills.
    Because she had confessed so quickly, the baron had not been quite as grateful as he should have been.
    So this new plea for assistance was most welcome— for two reasons.
    His courier had disappeared and all the silver coins that the man had been charged to deliver to the other Inquisitors had disappeared as well. Two of his men, riding to their next assigned village, had found the courier’s horse at a farm. The farmer swore that he’d been given the horse by a woman who wore a strange-looking black gown and rode a dark horse.
    She had left the next morning, riding south.
    He shivered at the memory. He couldn’t tell if it was fear or rage that made him react so, and that infuriated him.
    So he would accept Baron Felston’s invitation, rid the baron’s virtuous people of the foul stench of the witch, and refill his own purse.
    And on the journey to Ridgeley, he would think of some way to deal with the Gatherer and teach her the penalty for stealing from the Master Inquisitor.
     

 

     
     

Chapter Twenty-eight

 

     
     

     
    The dark horse stopped walking, snorted in surprise. Morag snapped out of a light doze. Seeing no obvious reason for the horse’s reaction, she pushed her tangled hair away from her face and grimaced as she forced her body to straighten up in the saddle.
    Something had been pushing her for the past two days, a feeling that if she didn’t keep moving, she would be too late. For what, she couldn’t say. But the feeling had been strong enough to keep her on the road, only stopping for a few hours each night to let the horses rest.
    Those hours had held no rest for her. The same dream washed through her uneasy sleep, over and over again. She was standing as the Gatherer in front of someone. She couldn’t see who it was because mist surrounded both of them. She held out her hand— and kept hoping the other person wouldn’t take it.
    She didn’t want to gather this spirit, but that decision wasn’t hers. The person standing before her would make that choice. Then a hand slowly came out of the mist, reaching for hers . . . and she would wake up, shivering.
    Driven out of sleep once again—and briefly wondering if Morphia was trying to send her a message through this dream—she had saddled the dark horse and continued the journey, traveling through the early hours of the morning. The sun was barely up now, and she had no idea where she was or how much farther she had to travel. She only knew she had to keep going until . . .
    There was a cottage up ahead. She’d