The Pillars Of The World

her face had blurred again when he looked at her was the day she had taken him to the village to meet the stranger named Felston, the man who had agreed to burden himself with a family obligation.
    Neall lowered his head until it rested on his raised knees. Darcy snuffled him worriedly, no doubt confused about why he was just sitting in the road.
    Ashk, his mother’s friend, was Fae.
    “You can see through the clamor?”
    He’d asked his father what “clamor” meant but had never explained why he’d wanted to know. So the answer had made no sense to him. But that wasn’t what Ashk had said. She’d said glamour —the magic the Fae used to confuse the eye and make themselves appear to be human.
    And he could see through it. That’s why his vision blurred at times. He was seeing through the mask for a moment before his eyes yielded to the magic .
    “Dianna gave him to me.”
    He had seen her before ... on the night of the Summer Moon, riding a pale mare with her shadow hounds running ahead of her.
    Mother’s mercy, why was the Huntress spending time at Brightwood pretending to be human?

    Darcy shoved him. He raised a hand and rested it on the gelding’s muzzle—and felt another wave of dizziness sweep over him.
    Ahern, who raised the finest horses in this part of Sylvalan—perhaps in all of Sylvalan. Ahern, whose face sometimes blurred for the first few seconds when Neall saw him. Ahern, the gruff old man who seemed to have a proprietary interest in the women who had lived at Brightwood—and the girl who still lived there.
    Ahern, too, was Fae.
    Slowly climbing to his feet, Neall leaned against Darcy for a few moments to get his balance before mounting.
    It was tempting to turn around and ride to Ahern’s farm, but he needed time to think and steady himself before he confronted the old man.
    The Fae had been present all along. But why were so many of them showing up now? And why had the Lightbringer and the Huntress, the two who could command all the others, suddenly becoming interested in Ari?
     

 

     
     

Chapter Twenty

 

     
     

     
    Morag woke from an uneasy sleep. At first, she thought the light was so pale because it was just past dawn. Then she heard children playing outside and knew it was later than that.
    There’s a storm coming.
    Shivering, she quickly dressed in black trousers and black overdress. Her own clothes. For the past few days, she’d worn garments loaned to her by other women in the Clan while her “corpse clothes” were cleaned and mended. The words had been teasingly said, but the women’s eyes had conveyed something else. There was no one in their Clan who was one of Death’s Servants, and in her own clothes, she looked too much like who she was. For Morphia’s sake, she had yielded. But not today.
    Picking up her brush, she turned to the mirror to work the sleep tangles out of her hair.
    The brush slipped from her hand and clattered to the table beneath the mirror.
    There were shadows on her face. The same shadows she’d been seeing on Morphia’s face for the past few days.
    Moving quickly, she packed her saddlebags and left the room. She hurried down one flight of stairs, almost tripping in her haste, and cursed the Clan elders who had given her sister a room on a different floor from hers.
    She ran through the corridors until she reached her sister’s room. She tried the door, found it locked, then pounded her fist against it.
    There was annoyance on Cullan’s face when he opened the door and saw her—and there were shadows. Morphia just looked at her with amused resignation when she brushed past Cullan and entered the room.
    “We were just going down for the morning meal,” Morphia said as she walked toward the door. “Will you join us?” Then she smiled, and added, “I told Cullan you wouldn’t tolerate looking like a bouquet of spring flowers for very long, even if the colors did flatter you.”
    Black flatters me more , Morag thought, grabbing Morphia’s arm to prevent her from leaving.
    “Morag!” Morphia protested. “Let me go!”
    Not if there’s a way to prevent it.
    She saw Cullan watching them, his mouth tightened in disapproval. Was he reconsidering his decision to go with Morphia now that he had met her sister? It was one thing to know the Gatherer was closely related to the Sleep Sister. It was quite another to see them together and realize they weren’t always so far apart as others might think.
    “I’ll wait for you