Rot and rubbish, Bryanna thought the following morning. After a breakfast of tasteless porridge she collected Alabaster from the stable and again rode north. Although there was no rain peppering the ground, no sleet pelting her hood, the wind was fierce, keening down from the mountains and whistling through the canyons.  The countryside was more rugged than she’d seen, the towns and castles spaced far apart.  Her bones were weary from traveling, her muscles sore, her disposition frayed beyond repair.  Not only was she hungry, but lonely as well, and as she spied a hawk in the cloudy sky, she silently cursed Isa and the visions. 

Yet as she guided Alabaster into the woods, she spied a hawk soaring overhead, his speckled breast hardly discernable.  With no other guide, she pulled on the reins and kept her face lifted to the sky to follow the hawk who flew above a little-used path that cut only deeper into the gathering gloom of the forest.  Little more than a deer trail, it seemed a ridiculous course.  Leafless trees rose like sentinels between the pines, and darkness gathered close. Bryanna was on edge. Nervous. Her lower lip was nearly raw from the bite of the wind and her own teeth gnawing at it.  She told herself she should turn around, go back to Calon, admit that she was in love with Morwenna’s husband and suffer being banished to Penbrooke again.  Would it be so bad to be under her brother Kelan’s rule? 

And what then?  Let him marry you off to some neighboring baron?  So that you can do whatever he wants and bear him heirs?  Is that what you want, to be the lady of a castle, shackled to a man you do not love?

Oh, Morrigu, surely Kelan wouldn’t be so unkind.

And yet, what would he want with her and her visions, her dreams of dead women speaking to her?  Even Kiera, his wife, would think Bryanna was addled.

Nay, she could not return to Penbrooke.

Nor Calon.

As the horse walked steadily through the twilight, her thoughts turned again to her sister’s husband. Dear Lord, why could she not stop thinking of him? Why did she have to suffer these torturous feelings?  Why, in all of God’s kingdom, was she chasing this lunatic dream when she could so easily turn around and return to her home?  Her stomach rumbled and she thought of the cook’s pheasant pies, and jellied eggs, and roasted eel.  Her mouth watered and she considered the laughter and gaiety of the Christmas Revels, the dancing and singing and her large chamber with its warm, glowing fire and soft, canopied bed.  She should return.  In the daylight, she should forget this fool’s mission and turn back to Calon, head South and--

“Nay, Bryanna, fail me not.  You must save the child,” Isa’s voice said, reverberating in Bryanna’s head and stilling her heart. 

So now it was a child.

Twas nonsense.

“What child?” she said aloud, her own voice ricocheting off of the canyon walls.  Why had she followed the hawk, anyway? She’d just followed a bird down an overgrown, little-used path. Had her senses completely abandoned her?  “I asked you what child, Isa!”

But, of course, Isa chose not to answer and Bryanna’s question bounced back to her again.  Alabaster snorted and the wind picked up, as if the old nursemaid had ordered it to slap at Bryanna’s face and ruffle her hair.

Her pride had stopped her from seeking the shelter of other keeps and impose upon family friends. Nay. She was on a mission that many might construe as pure folly.  How could she explain herself if she were to show up without a guard or companion at a friendly keep?  The lord would be suspicious, the lady posing questions, the servants listening at key holes.

“Fie and feathers,” she grumbled, as she spied what had once been a woodsman’s hut and was now falling into ruin, the roof collapsed, one wall missing. ‘Twas a pitiful shelter, but it would provide some shelter against the sleet that had begun to pepper the ground. She dismounted, yanked off the saddle, horse’s blanket and her own rolled blanket.  Then she untied the leather bags she’d bound to the saddle before tending to the mare.  The grass here at the edge of the woods was sparse, but Bryanna carried with her a little grain from the stores at Calon and had  bought a small satchel at the stable. She offered Alabaster water from the stream that passed near the dilapidated hut, as well as a ration of feed that would last until the morrow when she found more sustenance for them both. She was not destitute. In truth, she carried far more coin with her than was safe, but she would be careful with it for when it ran out, she would have nothing. 

Oh, this was a bad idea, one borne of a dead woman.

Or the demons in your mind, Bryanna.

Did they not come to you whilst you were hiding deep in the  dark corridors of the keep?  Yes, you were keeping your vigil, waiting to strike, praying to Morrigu for strength when the visions appeared.

Truth?

Or but a trick of your mind?