The Pillars Of The World Read Online Free PDF

took one look, and ran back to tell his master. Ahern and all of his men showed up a little while after that. The old man had walked through the cottage with her, but her warding spells had kept the inside of her home protected.
    The men cleaned the well, removed the dead animals, even cleaned up the back of her cottage. Still, for weeks afterward, she went to the nearest stream each morning to bring back drinking water.
     
    Later that year, when Ahern asked her if she was going to Seahaven again to sell her weaving, she had made excuses. She had understood the warning. The people in Ridgeley would tolerate her living outside their village on whatever scraps they chose to throw her way, but they wouldn’t tolerate her slipping the leash unless she forfeited Brightwood, the land that had been held by the women in her family since the first witch had walked the boundaries.
    She couldn’t forfeit the land. It was her heritage . . . and her burden.
    “All right,” Granny Gwynn said, bringing Ari back to the present. “All right. Two coppers. That’s the best you’ll get.”
    Ari held out her hand.
    Granny’s face darkened. Muttering, she pulled a coin pouch out of her skirt pocket. She looked like she wanted to spit on each copper before she dropped it into Ari’s hand.
    Saying nothing, Ari slipped the coins into her own deep skirt pocket before she again unpacked the baskets.
    When she picked up her empty baskets and pulled the curtain aside, Granny Gwynn said spitefully, “I hope that fancy brings you everything you deserve.”
    Or at least no harm , Ari thought as she left the shop.
    Odella and the other girls were still gathered nearby. When none of them even looked at her, Ari breathed a sigh of relief.
    “I’m going to try one of the paths through the woods,” Bonnie said. “If any of them are about, they won’
    t be on the main road.”
    Another girl fanned herself with a lace hanky. Her voice quivered with excitement and fear. “Do you really think they’ll come for the Summer Moon?”
    “You’ll probably end up with Eddis or Hest,” Bonnie said with a touch of malice.
    “Not Hest,” the hanky waver whined. “He has spots.”
    “Well,” Odella said with a sharp smile, “you know what all the boys say is the best cure for spots, don’t you?”
    The girls giggled.
    Dropping her baskets into the handcart, Ari left as swiftly as she could without seeming to run away.
    She should have heeded the strange feel in the air.
    Mistress Brigston had tried to cheat her out of the payment for the wall hanging. Having learned the hard lesson that the gentry tended to see nothing dishonorable about trying to cheat anyone but one of their own, Ari had refused to let the woman bring the wall hanging into the house “to check the colors” before she had received payment. Then there was dealing with Granny Gwynn, who was a hedge witch with just enough skill in magic to be dangerous to anyone who trusted her potions and spells, and more than enough greed to never deal fairly if she could get away with it.
    So now she was on her way home with a wall hanging no one would buy, a few coppers, and an intense desire to escape before anything else happened.

    She didn’t escape fast enough.
    Royce, Baron Felston’s heir, was waiting for her outside the village, just beyond a slight bend in the road.
    Most of the girls sighed over Royce’s trim figure and the handsome face framed by golden curls, but Ari knew the temper that lurked behind his blue eyes, the meanness of spirit that no amount of flattering words could sweeten.
    Ari gave him a cool, civil nod, hoping he’d let her pass.
    Wearing a satisfied grin, Royce fell into step beside her. “I hear you got a fancy for the Summer Moon.
    Let’s have a look at it.”
    She dodged his hands, putting the cart between them. “Stay away from me.” She was so intent on watching him, she barely noticed the power beginning to rise inside her—the strength of the earth