The Pillars Of The World

knowing he’s spending his time between other women’s thighs and not giving you a second thought.”
    Lyrra’s eyes were blank and cold. “What he does is his own business. But he’s the Bard, and I’m the Muse. We have to get the Fae to understand that they can’t expect the House of Gaian to continue to shoulder the burden of Tir Alainn’s existence while they do nothing.”
    “ They’re only witches !” Dianna shouted.
    Lyrra’s eyes turned colder. “Yes,” she said softly. “I imagine that’s how we justified it all those generations ago. They were Fae, but they weren’t really Fae. They weren’t like the rest of us. And they weren’t. They were the Daughters, the wellsprings through which the Mother’s power flowed, the Pillars of the World.” She closed her eyes, turned away. “They owe us nothing. But we owe them. It’s time we paid that debt with something more than trinkets and stud service to breed the next generation.”
    Lyrra took a deep breath, let it out slowly, then continued her packing. “I read the journals.”
    “You had no right to look at them,” Dianna snapped. “Those were private journals that belong to Ari’s family.”
    “Ari and her family are gone. There’s no one left to read them. Except us.” She fastened her saddlebags, then turned to look at Dianna. “A couple of journals seem to be missing. There were gaps in her family’s story.”
    Why should I care about the journals ? Dianna thought. They’re not important now. If Lyrra doesn’t stay . . .
    “If you’re so determined to leave,” Dianna said, “wait another day or two so that I—”
    “Can make another promise you have no intention of keeping?” Lyrra shook her head. “Whether you leave or stay is up to you.” She started to say something else, then stopped and picked up her saddlebags. “Aiden has the horses saddled by now. He’s waiting for me.”

    “Oh, yes,” Dianna said bitterly. “When Aiden snaps his fingers, you dance to his tune.”
    Lyrra stared at her for a moment, then brushed past her, opened the door, and left the room.
    Dianna waited until she heard the front door open and close before she walked out of the bedroom.
    The main room was filled with Fae. Friends. Family. All looking at her with eyes that silently pleaded.
    She walked back into the bedroom and shut the door. She stood there for a few minutes, doing nothing, seeing nothing. Then she walked into the dressing room and stared out the window.
    A hawk flew low across the meadow, a rabbit in his talons. Falco, bringing meat for the evening meal.
    Tears filled Dianna’s eyes. She pressed a hand against her mouth to keep from sobbing.
    If she left now and the shining road closed, her Clan wouldn’t remember that it was really Lyrra’s fault.
    They would blame her .
    So she was trapped here. She would live here in the cottage, confined to the boundaries of the Old Place, while she watched the families of her Clan come and go to a place she would never see again.
    She swallowed against the bitterness that welled up inside her. And she wondered, briefly, if this was how the witches had felt when the Fae had gone to Tir Alainn and had left them to anchor the world they had created and never got to see.
     

 

     
     

Chapter Thirty-five

 

     
     

     
    Early summer. Morag looked at the generous dish of stew and the thick slices of bread smeared with honey butter and could have wept with gratitude. The past months had been bitter ones for her. The Huntress and the Lightbringer had made good on their threat. She was shunned by all the Clans, including her own, for her “betrayal” of the Fae. No one prevented her from traveling up one of the shining roads or entering a Clan house, but they all acted as if she didn’t exist. She had endured it over the winter months, traveling from one Clan to another, because the season had been fiercer than previous years and finding adequate shelter in the human world for herself and her companions had proved too precarious.
    But as soon as she could, she had returned to the human world, traveling west, always west.
    “Why do you not eat?” Ashk said, taking a seat across from Morag at the outdoor table.
    Morag hesitated. When she had ridden into this Old Place earlier in the day and met Ashk walking through the woods, the woman had invited her to return to the Clan house for a meal. Ashk claimed to be merely a Lady of the Woods, but there had been sharp amusement in