When the sounds of their footsteps had faded and she was alone, Brona walked out of Hartfare and into the White Forest, naked and heartbroken and covered in the last of Errigal’s love. She washed herself of everything in a cold, haunted stream, in the shade of an ash tree.
To the ash, she whispered,
Don’t let Ban forget the wind and roots. Don’t let him forget me.
THE FOX
BAN HAD NEVER done magic quite like this.
The air was still and quiet over the rocky moorland, here where the hill pushed out of the White Forest like a cresting whale. Silver clouds stretched over the dark sky, brightened by the soon-coming sun and by the moon that hung still in the west, off-center and almost full. Regan Connley, clad in a thin linen shift, sat along an arrow of exposed granite as sleek as she and exactly her size. Her back to the east, she cupped a shallow bowl in her lap and bowed her head over it. She whispered in the language of trees, the words blowing tiny ripples against the surface of pooled blood.
Ban snapped his fingers and called fire to hand, setting the flame down fast against the patch of pine, thistle, rose, and thick paper tinder here at the south end of the granite. The fire caught and crackled, flaring white-orange before settling in to curl the long stems and petals. Moving eastward himself, Ban sang a low song to the wind and trees, hissing a word or two for the fire. He trailed a line of mixed sand and oak charcoal behind him as he went to the north and then the west. When he reached the southern point again, Ban paused to call fire again, drawing it along the entire circle.
“Now,” he said quietly. Connley heard him and stepped inside the circle.
Only the three of them attended this predawn witchery, and Connley solely because he’d insisted: I am as involved as you, and I am your other heart. Without me not all of your spirit will be there.
Ban found it unbearably sentimental, until he saw the mutual intensity in the eyes of husband and wife, and realized they both believed, completely.
What would such a partnership be like, he wondered, and then caught a fleeting memory—Elia’s hands holding his own, tiny moonlights dancing between and around their fingers.
Glancing up at the fading stars, the wizard knew it was time. Ban stripped himself of clothes and shoes before stepping into the circle. Wafts of thistle smoke and rose teased his shoulders as he crouched at a pan of orange mud from the iron marsh and drew words onto his chest and stomach, and his power rune at his forehead, heart, and genitals. He coated his forearms with the mud, and when he said Shield me, the mud dried in a quick snap, to near ceramic hardness and hot against his skin.
At a tearing sound, Ban looked up to see Regan reclined against the granite, and her husband kneeling beside her, using a small dagger to cut into the front of her shift. He sliced it open from the center of her breasts to the low mound at her groin. Parting the pale linen, Connley kissed his wife’s soft belly, then left his hand there as he kissed her between the breasts and again on her mouth.
Ban joined them at Regan’s feet while Connley moved to her head, and he handed the lady the bowl of her womb blood. She set it on her belly, fingers curled around the rim. Her chest rose and fell slowly and evenly.
The duke met Ban’s gaze, asking silently again his earlier question. Will this hurt her?
Two hours ago, when they left the Keep, Ban had answered, “I don’t know. It is not designed to cause harm, but there is wildness in the roots of Innis Lear, and the spirits we call will not be concerned with safety.”
“If it hurts Regan, I will hurt you,” Connley had promised, simple and calm.
Ban then replied, “If it hurts her, I will already be hurt.”
That had seemed to console the duke, though he watched Regan now with a hovering possessiveness.
Overhead, the stars had gone pale in the cool purple sky, and the moon hung behind Ban, its pregnant lower edge just kissing the horizon. Exactly right for beginning.
From a small basket at Regan’s feet, Ban took three long primary feathers, tawny and pale, from the wings of a ghost owl. He lifted them in the air, and in the language of trees called the name of the bird, taught to him very reluctantly by a cranky old oak at the edge of the forest.
Regan added her voice to Ban’s, and then Connley did, too, his unpracticed tree tongue sure enough for their work.
The three named the owl again and again, growing louder as they drove the word higher into the sky. Nine times and nine again, then finally at the end of a third cycle, they fell silent.
Ban closed his eyes to listen.
Wind whispered around them, and the fire snapped happily, reaching with tiny sparks up at the sky.
There: the high, hissing screech of the owl.
Ban got to his feet and spread his arms so the feathers caught the wind. Here, he called in the language of trees. Here we are, old ghost.
It swept down, silent and pale, its luminescent creamy underside feathers presenting like a shard of moonlight against the sky. The owl circled, and Ban called its name again. Regan put her fingers in the bowl of blood and then used the drops to trace the bird’s name against her sternum, while her husband panted in silence, excited and afraid.
Opening its tiny pink beak, the owl screeched again, showing Ban the dark maw of its gullet. Then it flared its wings and stretched out feathery long legs, talons flexed.
“Brace yourself,” Ban murmured, just before the owl landed against
