The Pillars Of The World

return. The saddlebags that hadn’t been taken made that clear. If he continued to return until the dark of the moon . . .
    He swallowed hard to ease the constriction in his chest. “Ari, if you should find yourself with child—”
    She shook her head quickly.
    “If you should find yourself with child,” he repeated stubbornly, “and he won’t stand with you . . . then I will.”
    She stared at him as if she’d never seen him before. Or as if something familiar had suddenly turned strange.
    “You would do that? You would take a husband’s vow for another man’s child?”
    “ Your child ,” he said fiercely. “ Yours . And if I was the man who was raising it with you, it would be mine as well no matter who sired it.”
    “Neall . . .” she whispered.
    “Don’t answer yet. Just know that I’ll stand with you. You don’t have to be alone.” Needing to escape, he strode to the open door.
    “Neall,” Ari said, moving toward him. She kissed his cheek. It was the kiss of a friend, and it hurt him because he wanted it to be so much more. “Blessings of the day to you, Neall.”
    His arms came around her, holding her tightly against him. Ari, Ari, my heart, my life . Could he really leave Ridgeley without her? Or would he also be leaving so much of himself that he would be little more than a ghost?
    He couldn’t think about that. Not now.
    He eased back, stepped away. “Blessings of the day to you, Ari.”
    It took effort, but he kept his stride easy and even as he walked to where Darcy was tied. The outward calm might have fooled Ari, but it didn’t fool the gelding. Darcy danced in agitation. He held the gelding to a walk, waved at Ari, who was still standing at the front door, then eased up enough to let Darcy trot.
    As soon as he was safely out of sight, Neall turned Darcy and headed back the way he’d come. But not to Brightwood. He needed another reason to be on this road in case he passed someone and the person mentioned seeing him to the baron. He wasn’t feeling steady enough to cope with the tenant farmers he had to see that morning, but there was one place he could go where the feelings he couldn’t hide yet would be noted but not commented upon.
    He sent Darcy galloping over the fields to Ahern’s farm.
     

 

     
     

Chapter Ten

 

     
     

     
    Death called her. Morag hesitated, then reluctantly signaled the dark horse to stop.
    She didn’t want to answer. In the two days since the Summer Moon, she had continued traveling south through the eastern part of Sylvalan, even though she was no longer sure she wanted to continue. In those two days, she had led too many souls to the Shadowed Veil so that they could go on to the Summerland.
    It wasn’t sickness that had killed so many in the villages she recently had passed through. At least, not a sickness of the body. But something had crept through those villages to give Death such a bitter feast.
    Hard deaths. Cruel deaths. Burnings. Hangings. Drownings. And that young girl, that child, who had been
    . . .
    Morag bit her lip, tried to draw a mental curtain across that memory.
    There were other deaths in those places as well. Squirrels and sparrows. An owl. A fox. The rotting, partially eaten bodies surrounded clusters of dead trees. Even in warm daylight, there was something about those dead trees that made her shiver.
    She had begun this journey in order to see this part of the human world and gain some understanding of the people who lived here. She had seen more than she had bargained for. She had seen too much. Now she needed a quiet place to rest and renew herself.
    But there was no rest here, as she’d hoped there would be. This was one of the Old Places. She could feel the difference in the land and knew it was so. But she also felt a heart-deep despair, very much like what she felt in people gathered outside a sick room when a loved one was suffering through the last hours of living.
    Death called her.
    Morag closed her eyes and opened herself to Death’s message.
    This was not a gentle dying. This was not a soul contained in a body that had lived a full span of years and was ready to return to the Great Mother. Desperation and pain were coming toward her. And fear.
    She urged the dark horse forward through the shadows of the old trees.
    Gather your own kind, Morag. Let the human world be.
    If none of us who have the gift offer to show them the road to the Shadowed Veil, how do the humans find it?
    They don’t.
    Are