The Pillars Of The World

hawk? Had it been a Fae Lord? Why would any Fae be showing themselves now? They’d never done so before. At least not that she could recall. Was it just curiosity because Lucian had been with her, and his presence here had been taken by some of the others as tacit permission to make her aware of them? Or was it something more? And if it was more, what did they suddenly want from her?
    And what hadn’t the small man said about the pup and Dianna?
    Sighing, Ari rubbed her nose against the puppy’s head. “Come on. There’s a rabbit waiting for us. A stew for me and meat for you. And while the stew is cooking, we have an important task— finding the right name for you.”
    Neall leaned over, cupped his hands under the spill of water, and drank. The last handful he splashed over his face.
    They could use a soft, soaking rain. The streams and creeks were already running a bit low, and crops weren’t growing as well as they should. To make things worse, the tenant farmers had chosen yesterday, when he’d been with Ari, to bring their complaints and concerns to Baron Felston’s bailiff. The bailiff, in turn, had brought them to the baron’s attention. And Felston had blamed Neall’s “sloth” for fewer acres being planted and the lack of rain to help what was planted grow.
    How many times had he told Baron Felston that people would not starve through the winter in order to plant full acres in the spring when the reward for the hunger and hard work was to have more of it taken in tithes. Being blamed, again, for the problems caused by Felston’s greed was the last wound in a lifetime of such wounds. Today, while riding to all the tenant farms to verify the complaints—as if he needed to do again what he’d been doing since the spring— he was trying to decide if he was going to head west to his mother’s land and come back later for Ari, or if he was going to try to find a place nearby where he could stay and work while she considered whether she was going with him or staying at Brightwood.
    He filled his canteen and stepped away from the creek. “Come on,” he told Darcy. “Let’s get this finished.”
    A round stone hit his boot hard enough to sting.
    He scanned the strip of woods that separated a couple of fields. Saw nothing.
    “You would be wise to look to Brightwood, young Lord,” said a gruff voice.
    Nothing more. There was no use searching. There would be nothing to see, no one to find.
    Neall threw himself into the saddle. The Small Folk didn’t give idle warnings, which meant something had happened that they wanted him to know about.
    “Brightwood,” he said, letting the gelding choose its own speed. If Felston punished him for shirking his duties, so be it. What the baron wanted wasn’t worth a pebble compared to Ari.
    When he and Darcy reached the cottage, they were both sweating heavily from the hard, fast run.

    “ Ari !” Neall kicked out of the stirrups and leaped out of the saddle in a way that would probably get him killed with any other horse.
    What could be wrong here? Had something happened to her? The only weapon he had was his work knife, and that wasn’t going to help much. He drew it out of the sheath in his boot and promised himself that he wouldn’t go out again without at least a bow and quiver.
    “Neall?”
    Her voice was faint. He turned, trying to catch the direction. The gelding figured it out faster and ambled toward the privy that stood a few feet from the cow shed.
    Neall ran to the privy, reached for the door—and had enough sense left to hesitate. “Ari?”
    “Neall?” she squeaked.
    “Yes, it’s Neall.”
    “Go away.”
    “Damn it, I will not go away!” He reached for the door again.
    “Neall ... go stand by the well for a minute or two. Please.”
    Starting to feel foolish, and angry because he did, he turned and strode to the well. “Walk,” he told Darcy. “Go on, take a bit of a walk around the meadow to cool down. Then you can have some water.”
    Darcy snorted, looked at the privy, then began an easy walk around the meadow.
    Neall watched for a few seconds to make sure the gelding would walk and not start to graze. May the Mother bless Ahern. He didn’t know how the man managed to raise horses that had more brains than any others, but he was grateful the old man had been willing to sell the gelding to him.
    Filling a bucket from the well, he stripped off his sweaty shirt, then used the dipper Ari kept on a hook to pour water over