The Gates of Winter - Mark Anthony [39]
Aryn looked at Grace. “Will you join us?”
Grace couldn't help smiling. “I think I already have,” she said. Aryn's words were a great relief, but one question nagged at the back of her brain.
“Lirith,” she said, “you mentioned that the shadow covens were forbidden long ago. What would happen if Ivalaine discovered us?”
It was Aryn who answered. “We have no fear on that account. If Ivalaine and Tressa are not members of the shadow coven, they are at least sympathetic to its cause. Although, as Matron, she dares not reveal it.”
“And what of Sister Liendra?” Lirith said. “She was at the center of the Pattern, and she seeks to be Matron in Ivalaine's stead. Most of the Witches follow her lead. What would happen if Liendra were to discover us?”
Aryn turned away. “Then our threads would be plucked from the Pattern, and a spell would be woven over us, so that we would never be able to use the Touch or the magic of the Weirding again.”
Grace shuddered, and Lirith's face went gray. Being cut off from the Weirding would be like a walking death—alive, but unable to feel any of the light or warmth all around them.
“I've got just one more question,” Grace said as Lirith and Aryn made ready to leave. “Lirith, you said the shadow covens were forbidden for working cruel spells.”
The witch nodded. “They brought the hatred of the common folk upon the Witches. That's why they were all disbanded.”
“Only they weren't,” Aryn said, shaking her head. “Mirda's shadow coven survived.”
“And that's my question,” Grace said, crossing her arms. “If this one shadow coven endured, others might also have survived. And if so, what if they aren't ones that work for good, like Mirda's coven? What if they're the wicked shadow covens, the ones that gave the Witches a bad name?”
Silence pressed close. The coals settled on the hearth, and sparks crackled up the chimney.
“Come, sister,” Lirith said at last, taking Aryn's good left arm. “It is time we all went to bed.”
11.
Grace woke to the sound of bells.
She sat up in bed, the shards of a dream falling away from her like broken pieces of glass. Her hair was snarled, and her nightclothes clung to her, cold and clammy with sweat. The space beside her in the bed was empty and cold; Tira had spent last night in Melia's chamber. Frigid air poured through the chamber window, along with hard granules of snow. The wind must have pushed it open.
Grace scrambled from the bed and reached to pull the window shut. She halted. Twenty feet below, at the base of the castle's north wall, prints dented the crust of new snow. She couldn't be certain, but it looked as if the prints had been pressed into the snow by small, cloven hooves. She lifted her gaze, toward a feathery smudge hovering in the distance. The hoofprints made a line pointing straight toward it. Gloaming Wood.
Shivering, Grace shut the window and moved to the fireplace. She stirred up the coals, threw on several sticks, and as flames leaped up she shucked off her nightclothes and pulled on a wool gown the same frosty purple as the predawn sky.
As she dressed, her mind raced. It was the sound of bells that had roused her from her dream, and she had heard bells yesterday in the castle garden. The Little People were trying to communicate with her, she was certain of it. But what was the message?
Grace tried to remember the dream the bells had awakened her from, but it was already growing fuzzy. She had been alone in some sort of castle or keep, running down empty halls, searching in shadowed chambers for something. Searching for a key. But the key to what?
To hope, she thought, only she didn't know why. Was that what the Little People were trying to tell her?
She grabbed her cape, tossed it around her shoulders, and threw open the chamber door, to the round-mouthed surprise of the serving maid standing on the other side. She carried a tray with a pot of maddok.
“Perfect timing,” Grace said, pouring a steaming cup and setting the pot back on the tray. “I wouldn't have made it far without this.”
The serving maid stared, slack-jawed,