He’d learned to shut out the warnings over the years—you could do anything with practice—and there weren’t that many people in Barnstable Forest anyway. All the more reason that this summons to a duty long abandoned took Herne the Hunter completely by surprise. Once, long ago, he’d ridden with the Wild Hunt, and when he received the knowledge of a soul about to pass into Anoeth, that consciousness had meant he must turn and go in search of it to bring it to his master, Lord Idath. But those days were done—he had relinquished his horned crown and the power of his heritage in the Fairy Realm to become a simple forester. All who served the Lord of Winter knew that all things must pass, and if the memory of the Old Ways were fated to pass out of Britain, then Herne vowed he, too, would depart gracefully. Why was he being summoned back to his old commitments now? Herne straightened up, gazing around himself for danger as warily as any other forest dweller.
