The Winter Witch by Paula Brackston

Author:Paula Brackston
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi, epub
Tags: Fantasy, General, Fiction
ISBN: 9781472103697
Publisher: Corsair
Published: 2013-09-18T23:00:00+00:00

11.

At last the moment is come. We were up before dawn mustering the stock and arrived here in Tregaron with the brightening of the day. The ponies were excitable, in particular the youngsters, but I kept them close by me and they proved biddable enough. At the very last minute Cai had a change of heart and decided he would keep two of the older brood mares. With luck they are both carrying foals for next year, so that, his reasoning went, we will have some core stock with which to rebuild the herd. If the drove goes well and we have money to do so.

It pains me to acknowledge that this decision is in part due to the loan he accepted from Isolda. That creature! Had he known what I now know, he would never have taken money from her, however desperate the hour. It hurts me that he kept the arrangement secret, and learning of it at that dreadful dinner, amidst such company . . . I thought I was beginning to understand him. I thought he was beginning to trust me. And yet he did not think to share this important decision about the future of the farm—about our future—with me.

Had not other events overtaken the matter in both importance and urgency I would no doubt have dwelled upon it. As it is, such a small slight has paled beside the awful truth of what Isolda Bowen is, and of what terrible actions she is responsible for. For as I have had time to think, to examine the events of recent weeks, I have recognized some terrible facts. Not only did she compel, by threat and by cursed magic, Reverend Cadwaladr to further her aims, but I am convinced she was behind the thunderstorm that killed Cai’s cattle. The weather was too extreme, too swiftly changing, to be natural. And I sensed a presence on the mountain that day, an evil presence. I now know whose it was. No doubt she thought to ruin Cai by robbing him of his herd. Then, when she saw he would not be so easily cast down, she lent him money to tie him to her. She is playing with him. She has no interest in him, I see that now. It is the farm she wants, for the well. And the Grimoire. My main concern now must be what she may do next. I believe we are all of us in peril on the drove now, for how much easier it will be for her to cause mayhem amid the melee of the herds, away from the watchful people of Tregaron. I must be ever on my guard.

At the same time, there is the practical business of the drove itself to occupy us all. The livestock whose fate lies many miles from here have so far proved easy to herd along. Of course, this may not be the case a few hours from now when they are part of the whole drove.

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