An expression of mild panic crossed Leagh's face, and one hand tightened briefly over her belly.
"How do we do this?"
"We all have Acharite magic within us," Faraday said, "now freed, as we have all come through death."
DragonStar had now walked very quietly out of the dome, and was wandering through theploughed field. The Alaunt had settled down into a restful, watchful pack to one side of the dome,while the Star Stallion rested his weight on one hip and dozed, ignoring the lizard who laystretched out behind him idly swatting at the stallion's twitching tail.
A tiny star fell from the stallion's mane and fizzled momentarily in the damp earth.
"How strange," Faraday continued, her voice still very quiet, "that we have the use of Acharite magic, and that DragonStar has placed us within a field of ploughed earth, and has emphasised these things to us."
Of the others, only DareWing had enough memories of the old Achar to truly understand what Faraday alluded to.
"You speak of the old god of Achar," he said, then paused to cough violently. "Artor the Ploughman."
"Artor was evil!" Leagh and Gwendylyr both said together.
"Yes," Faraday said, "but perhaps we should not disregard the influence Artor would have had on the literal physical
realm of Achar, as also the influence that that would have had on our power."
She paused, trying to sort out her thoughts. "Of the five of us, it is Dare Wing who is sick. He has a mixture of blood, Icarii and Acharite ... and maybe the Artor influence that — possibly — exists in all of us has sickened him nigh unto death."
"I thought DragonStar said it was ground fever," Gwendylyr said, frowning.
"Ground fever is the outward face of the sickness," Goldman said, catching Faraday's train of thought, "but the stain on DareWing's spirit is the Artorite stain. It would affect him far more than any of us."
"And is that why this field has not yet flowered?" Leagh said. "And why DareWing cannot get better? We must expel the remaining influence of Artor?"
"Yes!" Faraday said, and the others all smiled, for the explanation felt good to them. "Yes. We must reject the rib and ridge of the ploughed earth."
"How?" said Gwendylyr, ever concerned with the practical.
There was a silence.
"We must ask ourselves a question," Goldman said. "What is it that remains within us of Artor the Plough God?"
Another silence.
"Faraday," DareWing said, his voice now nearly a death whisper, "of all of us here, you have been the only one who has been thoroughly taught in the ways of Artor the Ploughman. I only fought against it, and Goldman ..."
"Was but a boy of twelve when Azhure ran Artor into his grave," Goldman said. "Faraday, what can you tell us?"
Faraday sat in silence for a while, remembering her childhood lessons in the Way of the Plough, and her allegiance to, and love for, Artor the Ploughman. The months, months that, in all, amounted to years, she'd spent studying the Book of Field and Furrow. How blind I was, she thought.
But the faith of the Plough was so comforting. Why?
"We loathed and feared the landscape," she eventually said, "and Artor gave us a face and a name for that fear. Untamed landscape, mountain, forest and marsh, was the haunt of evil creatures — the Forbidden — who were undoubtedly Planning to swarm over all that was good and beautiful ... all o ver us."
DareWing's mouth curled in a bitter smile, and he turned his head aside.
"Having defined our fear — the wild landscape and all that lived within it — we felt comforted, and so we took to the forests with our axes, and to the mountains with our armies, and to the marshes with our engineers, and we pushed back the wild landscape as far as we could. We tamed the earth and made it our slave."
"We enslaved it with the plough," Gwendylyr said.
"Yes," Faraday said, "with the plough, and the neat square fields, and the straight and tightly-controlled furrow."
"'Furrow wide, furrow deep'," Goldman said. "I remember my father saying that constantly."
"Must we make amends?" Gwendylyr asked.
Faraday looked to Dare Wing. "Must we?"
"No," he eventually said. "Not as such. The earth does not require 'amends'."
"It merely requires us to let go our hatred and our fear," Goldman said.
"But I don't hate and fear the landscape!" Leagh said.
"There is still something deep within each of us," Faraday said, "that corrupts us. It is the legacy of a thousand generations of unthinking worship of Artor. We must let that corruption go."
"How?" Leagh said. She looked about at the other witches in the circle, then down at DareWing. He looked worse than she'd ever seen him, and Leagh realised that they must correct whatever was wrong very shortly.
Faraday smiled. "I think I know," she said, and in the ploughed field DragonStar raised his head and smiled also.
"We still fear some aspect of the landscape," Faraday said. "All of us. We must confront the fear, and let it go."
"But —" Gwendylyr began.
