The Hobs Bargain

by Patricia Briggs

Chapter 12

 

  TWELVE

  I saddled Duck, fumbling with the knot of the cinch. My fingers were clumsy, so finally I took the saddle off altogether. Holding the spirits seemed to be affecting my coordination; moving was like wading through deep water.

  Slowly, I climbed the side of the stall to mount. Duck gave me an odd look, but stood patiently while I steadied myself on his back. If I had thought I could walk to the far end of town without falling, I would have. Riding was better than walking, but only a little.

  Death, murmured the things that I held. Death.

  Now, when they pushed and tugged at the barriers I'd drawn around them, it was with eagerness for the kill rather than anger at being captured.

  I bent and picked up the cedar staff that leaned against the stall. Duck sidestepped abruptly so I didn't fall off. I wondered how much of the weakness I felt in my knees was due to what I planned and how much to lack of food. I didn't remember eating since yesterday morning, but every time I thought of food, I could taste the blood of my dreams.

  Outside the stable, the loud sound of men's voices tried to draw my attention. But that part of the village's survival was Merewich's; I had other work to do. The sun had continued on its journey; I must have been in the stable longer than I had thought. There wasn't much time now.

  Once away from the bell where the raiders and villagers worked out their differences, the streets were deserted, just as in my vision of the bloodmage. Without the raiders, without the bloodmage, Fallbrook had a chance to survive. They would have to appease the earth spirit, but no doubt Merewich could manage it somehow. Perhaps the death of the bloodmage would be appeasement enough.

  I stopped at the place where I'd seen the mage in my vision. On my right was the house where I'd forced the creatures to wait for me. The noeglins' stench was spooking Duck, or maybe he could smell the Wiggins' corpse-rot odor. The latter was more subtle, but I found it harder to bear.

  Slowly, I slid off. When I was steady on my feet, I took the bridle off Duck's head and shook it. He planted his feet and snorted at me. until I yelled at him. My yell became a shriek I couldn't control as the power from my captives threatened to shake me apart. I plugged my ears and dropped to the ground. The sharp pain in my knees from the little bits of rock I'd fallen on cleared my head a bit, and I was able to stop shrieking.

  Duck was gone, but the fetch knelt on the stones beside me, a smile on her face. I closed my eyes, unwilling to let her distract me. Gradually the creatures subsided, satisfied they would be free only when I chose.

  The battle over for the moment, I rolled to my feet and opened my eyes. The fetch's clothes were wrinkled and stiff with dirt and sweat. Dark hair had escaped its braid almost entirely, and she was paler than before. She smiled, and I saw that her lip was puffy and bleeding slightly - I didn't remember doing that.

  "I thought that you could only come out at night. " I tasted the blood on my lip when I spoke.

  The smile turned to a velvety, smokey laugh, and for the first time I saw that her eyes were still in that odd, almost pupilless state. No wonder Kith had stared at me. "With your call I can go where you demand. Without you, do you think the noeglins could escape their bog?"

  "When I release you, you will go back where you came from," I stated with more confidence than I felt. What if I'd released these things to terrorize the village? Without me or the hob to protect them, the people would be helpless.

  She laughed harder. It was difficult to believe, looking at her, that she wasn't exactly what she appeared to be. As soon as the thought crossed my mind, she stopped laughing and dropped her head to meet my eyes. She stepped toward me with snakelike smoothness.

  "Yes," she said, "believe in me. "

  I took a deep breath. "Go now and wait in the house for what will come. "

  She raised her chin, but I was too tired for theatrics. "Go. "

  I put all the force I could muster into my voice. It must have been enough, for she left.

  I'd called the spirits to this place because I wasn't certain I could draw upon their power if they weren't near. I hadn't paid enough attention when the ghost had shown me how it was done. Maybe if I failed, the creatures would strike the bloodmage down before they left for their usual haunts. I took a firmer grip on my cedar staff as if it would save me.

  The wait seemed to last forever. Bored and terrified, I stood until I swayed, then sat on the ground and drew pictures in the dust of the road. Big loopy flowers were easy, even with the awkward length of the staff. I erased them and drew a square. A few more lines and it was the widow's house. While I rubbed the house out with my hand, I glanced up and saw the bloodmage.

  The sun was at his back, and I squinted against the glare. He started his horse toward me, so he must have stopped when he saw me. I stood up and dusted my hands, one at a time, on my skirt.

  He stopped again, just a few paces away, playing with the hob's chain, rolling the little beads through his fingers, which were stained, like the earring, with the hob's blood. He rode alone, as the sight had foretold. Caefawn must have found a way to lure the berserkers away, perhaps even killed them before he died. The blood on the beads was dry and it flaked off, drifting to the bloodmage's hand.

  The sight stilled my doubts. The spirits I held were quiet as I gathered their power to use against the mage. It took longer than I'd expected. Each spirit had to be dealt with separately; each extracted something of me for its gift. We were interbound until I felt there was little left that was only me.

  "Well, now," said the mage, who'd watched me patiently. His voice was a polite, mellow tenor.

  "Sir," I said politely, more from habit than anything else. A polite greeting of strangers.

  Moresh's bloodmage had given me nightmares as a child, nightmares that had worsened after Quilliar's death. Even then, the red clothing made more of an impression than anything else about the man. He was only my height, with ordinary features, dark coloring, and Beresforder blue eyes. There was little in his face that hinted at what he was - only the subtle softening of what had once been a sharp-featured face. His eyes were quite mad.

  For the first time since I took the initial noeglins, I felt that I was thinking clearly again. Facing the bloodmage at last, a deep calmness had taken root in my soul. Within me I held the power to destroy him. It was a heady feeling. My whole life I had feared this man, and now I did not. The power I held vibrated my bones like a building storm - of evil.

  How, then, was I different from the bloodmage?

  He was talking, but I didn't hear him. My own question consumed me.

  Death! roared the spirit of evil in my head, a spirit made of the bits of my servants. Kill it, and all will be gained! We shall not fear the Green Man. What can he do to us? We can save the village from him as we save Kith from the bloodmage.

  "How could I have missed you?" murmured the bloodmage in my ear. He must have dismounted while I was distracted, because he stood just behind me now, embracing me like a lover.

  Yes, shrieked my spirit, take him now. Bind him and make him ours. Hurry! Do it quickly. Take his power.

  A surge of magic shook me.

  "Never seen anyone with this kind of power," continued the bloodmage. He gripped my shoulders and turned me toward him. His expression was filled with the same greed for power that had seized me far more tightly than the mage's hands.

  When the spirits whispered to me, the bits of them that were becoming part of me answered. I knew then that if I managed to kill the bloodmage this way, I'd be an even greater danger to the village than he was. Merewich, Koret, and Tolleck trusted me. There were other mageborn in the village; I knew that, and so did the vile things who'd sifted it from my mind. Mageborn without the benefit of the hob's training, and thus easy victims. Part of me writhed in horror, part of me thought, Prey.

  No wonder Caefawn had watched me when I called the ghosts. He had be
en willing to kill me, rather than let me access the ghost's power - now, too late, I knew why.

  I twisted out of the bloodmage's hold and shouted, "Go!" Using the voice of command I'd learned had a strong effect on the spirits, a matter of emphasis rather than volume. And I released the spirits, all of them. I returned the power they'd given and took the little bits of myself, of my spirit back. I could feel their disappointment as they scattered.

  The widow's house rattled and creaked.

  "What was that?" said the mage, turning to look at the house where the spirits had waited.

  His distraction gave me time to realize I had nothing to fight the bloodmage with. For a while I'd forgotten to fear him. I remembered now, remembered just why I'd been so desperate to destroy him. But it was too late. I'd used what little power I'd had to hold the spirits. Sweat dripped down my forehead as if I'd run a league rather than waited here for the bloodmage.

  "My dear," he crooned after he'd determined there was no danger in the widow's house. "You are a treasure. " He stepped to me and locked his hands on my face.

  He took my mind.

  Oh, not all of it. Some cool part of me observed what he was doing. It was not so different from what I had done to the spirits I'd taken. Perhaps, in a different time, he would have had the sight and been a spirit speaker.

  He broke something within me, part of a deep tie between spirit and. . . soul, I suppose. I almost heard it give, like a bone crushed by a hillgrim. It broke, and I was his.

  He stepped back, pulled his mind away, and left me an observer in my own body. He patted my cheek, but I felt it only remotely. "We'll wait here for Kith. I've called him, so it shouldn't be long now. I have three other berserkers I managed to save. They were out hunting, but I've called them back to me. I'll need a few more men from here, too. With a guard attachment I should be able to reach a more civilized place again and sell my skills. "

  My eyes, drifting without direction, caught on the hob's ear piece, still laced through the bloodmage's fingers like a talisman.

  "You may call me. . . Caefawn," said the hob.

  The knowledge that Caefawn was dead brought tears to my eyes.

  "What are you crying about, child?" asked the bloodmage with little interest.

  I would have answered him if I could have, but the broken part of me seemed to have lost the ability to turn thoughts to words. I stared at him silently, and he shagged. He started to do something more to me, but the sound of hoofbeats stopped him. He left whatever it was he was trying half-done.

  It was one of his berserkers. He and his horse were covered with mud. His coloring was lowlander, but he was bigger than even Koret, and very young. But his eyes held the same old knowledge Kith's did. It made me sad even through my terror.

  "Fennigyr, I felt your call. " His voice was emotionless, and he moved with the same bone-weariness his horse did.

  "Well? Where are the others?"

  "Gone. Renwyr took off after a white horse, and I lost Stemm in a mudslide. I've been looking for them, but then you called. "

  "They're not dead," the bloodmage said after a moment. "One of them is hurt, though. We'll have to find them later. "

  Frantically I tried to figure out what the bloodmage had done to me, how he'd separated my soul from my spirit. Caefawn had told me that people (and his definition of "people" was considerably broader than mine) were composed of three parts: body, spirit, and soul. The mage had separated my soul from my spirit and body.

  It was my spirit now that controlled my body, like a different sort of ghost. Not precisely without intelligence, but it was an intelligence obedient to the mage's will, just as the ghosts had obeyed me.

  Horse hooves clattered on the road. My head turned, and I could see Torch approach at an easy canter. Kith sat so still that he appeared less real than the fetch had. He'd crossed the stirrup leathers (sized for me) in front of him. His face, I saw as he neared us, was as frozen as stone.

  "Fennigyr, I heard your call," he said. "What do you wish?"

  "Dismount," said Fennigyr, pursing his lips in thought.

  She (I couldn't think of her as me, though I suppose she was) picked up the staff of cedar from the road and began drawing flowers in the dust, turning her attention away from the men.

  I could hear them talking, but I was forced to stare at the dust flowers. The restriction reminded me of a vision. A vision, I thought, looking at the cedar she held in her hand. Oh, she was looking at it, too, but not the way I was. I focused on the cedar and pulled at it with my mind. Caefawn told me to use it as an anchor. I hoped it would help me to bridge the division the bloodmage had drawn. I could feel a weakness in his spell, perhaps where he'd begun to alter it when the berserker distracted him.

  "Ah, Kith," Fennigyr said, "you were my best, my favorite. Did you know? I always liked the men with a little less bulk and more speed. I had to talk Moresh into using you at all - he liked them with more bulge and height. I asked him, Who'd you have an easier time hearing in the woods, a moose or a ferret?"

  The force of Kith's stare drew her attention away from the cedar staff.

  "In this light you almost glow, Firehair," continued the mage. "I always like my works of art to be pretty as well as functional, and I've always been partial to red. "

  Kith's eyes were still holding mine. If I hadn't known him so well, I wouldn't have seen his mouth tense when the mage called him Firehair. I wouldn't have seen the power that name had over him. It bound him to the mage. I could see the tie, spirit to spirit.

  I remembered what Caefawn had told me about names. Kith had a name, given him by earth, air, fire, water, and magic. Given to him by the bloodmage - who was evidently a man of little imagination. Firehair? My poor Kith.

  I could feel the part of me constrained by the mage's spell. It itched like an infected tooth, and I pushed against it.

  "I'm not Moresh," the mage said. "He didn't know how much of myself I put in each of you. "

  He spoke like an artisan - didn't the saddlemaker say that very thing so often it had become a running joke in the village? I paused in my thoughts - hadn't I given part of myself to the creatures I'd commanded? Perhaps Fennigyr meant it literally.

  I focused on Kith, trying to see him as I'd seen Wandel while he'd practiced, as I'd seen Kith's ties to the bloodmage a moment ago.

  Kith broke into the bloodmage's speech. "What did you do to the girl?"

  "She's not your concern," purred the mage. "One of the things I liked best about you was that you were never quite tamed. Moresh thought it was a weakness. He feared you, did you know? What he couldn't see was that the difference made you better than the others. You're older than any of my other men. " The mage stared sadly at the sky. "Such hard work to make, and so easily destroyed. He didn't see you were more than just a man without a shield arm. I could kill you. . . "

  She looked at the sky, too, but all we saw was clouds. I needed to see Kith. Or my staff. If I could have spoken, I'd have sworn. I swore to myself anyway, though I continued to struggle with the spell and my fear.

  A harsh grunt returned her flittering attention to Kith. He was on his knees, and I could see the veins in his forehead. I could see how the mage used his bonds to cause pain.

  ". . . how easy it would be?" asked the mage. He hurt Kith some more.

  Kith's fair skin had turned dark red.

  I fought; the itch turned to an ache - how strange without a body, and at that moment it turned to outright pain as something tore. I would have screamed if I could. I'd done more damage, but I'd also damaged Fennigyr's control.

  I'd freed my magic, too, what little there was of it.

  Firehair, I thought. Holding Kith's real name to me, I looked at him. With his name, my spiritsight was much clearer than it had been with the harper. Like Wandel's, Kith's spirit was full of light. If ghosts were a candle, then living spirits were a glass, magnifying the light of
the soul. I could see the little bits of foreign spirit tied into his own, and I plucked at them. But when I pulled one away, I had to replace it, because I saw I'd damaged Kith. Without those little bits, Kith's spirit would be wounded beyond healing. So I attacked the spirit bond that tied him to Fennigyr instead. It fell apart like a poorly knitted sock, leaving Kith's spirit damaged, but free.

  "What?" exclaimed the bloodmage, staring at Kith.

  Kith gasped a deep breath of air, unaware that it was not the mage who had released him. The mage was not so handicapped. Kith didn't have time to look up before the mage's swiftly drawn sword slid into his back and out his belly.

  She turned her face away from Kith's death as wild grief sliced through me. Her gaze passed by the other berserker, and I could see the pain on his face. The low-lander had loved Kith, too.

  Failure and agony almost distracted me enough that I didn't see what lurked behind the berserker, but no one could miss the solid thwack as Caefawn's staff hit the berserker in the head.

  Caefawn's cloak was gone, and his remaining clothes were in rags. His charcoal gray coloring was somehow more foreign, exposed so openly. The neat silver-black braid of hair was loosed, spilling in a wild curtain about him. His right knee was bandaged heavily, and his ears, pinned tightly against his head, were free of ornamentation.

  "Bloodmage," growled Caefawn, sounding something more than human.

  Hope flared inside me for a moment, but I'd lost my belief in the hob's omnipotence sometime since the day I'd ridden up to fetch him from his mountain. The hob did not have the power to take on the bloodmage, not on this side of the river. I could feel the bindings that held him to the mountain and drained his strength. For the first time I understood that not only did the mountain augment his power, but he also fed her.

  I would get to watch him die while I wondered if I could have fought the bloodmage better if I hadn't weakened myself by taking the spirits for their power.

  "So you're the thing that's got my berserkers chasing their tails," observed the mage, sounding fascinated. I could hear nothing in his voice that suggested killing Kith had bothered him, though he'd sounded like a love-struck boy just moments before. "What are you?"

  The hob snarled like a cornered lynx, beautiful and inhuman. His red eyes glowed even in the full light of day. "I am Death," he hissed.

  "No," breathed the bloodmage. "I am. "

  Something dark left his hand, something vile that made my spirit flinch and step back. It hit Caefawn and spread down his chest. But as if it couldn't adhere to his skin, it dripped off him to puddle on the ground. The dirt beneath the hob's feet melted and steamed beneath the force of Fennigyr's magic.

  Caefawn sprang onto the mage but hit some invisible barrier a foot away from Fennigyr's body. It propelled the hob backward a bodylength, and when the hob came to his feet he was clearly favoring his bandaged knee.

  "I am your death. " There was mock sorrow in the mage's voice.

  Frenzied by the hob's danger, I pushed the edges of the broken place inside my head where the mage's spell was slowly unraveling.

  Fennigyr waved his hand gently and the hob staggered back. The mage laughed and displayed the earring he held. "Yours, I believe?" He closed his hand on it. "It is enough to make you mine. I have just been forced to kill one of my children - was it you who set him free? But you will make an admirable replacement. Whatever you are, you have magic to feed me with. "

  The hob was frozen where he stood. I could see the sweat gathering on his forehead as he fought the mage's hold. But it was no use. If he could have forced the battle into a physical contest, Caefawn would have won, but magic for magic, the mage was an easy victor. I didn't think the bloodmage could tamper with the ties binding the hob to the mountain because they were part of the hob, not an addition like the berserkers' ties to Fennigyr. But I never doubted the bloodmage could kill Caefawn.

  I was so tired, and my head hurt and itched in places I couldn't scratch. I rubbed my temples, trying to get some relief.

  I rubbed my temples.

  I'd broken through the spell at last, at least part of it. I had a moment to savor it, then the spell unwound. The shock of it left me lying on the cobbles, but my body was my own again.

  A groan from Caefawn caught my attention. Neither he nor Fennigyr appeared to have noticed my momentary fit. Caefawn's face was drawn back in a grimace of pain and effort.

  Neklavar, I thought, giving Caefawn the name he'd told me while I dreamed. True dreams they'd been, for my vision cleared and I could see far deeper into Caefawn's spirit than I had before - as it had when I'd used Kith's real name.

  Thick cords of green and gold reached from his soul through his spirit into the ground, his ties to the mountain. With spiritsight, I could see the bindings that the bloodmage was trying to put on him. They looped the hob loosely, but slid off without attaching.

  The bloodmage didn't have the hob's real name.

  Fennigyr, my father had called him when the mage came to collect my brother's body and raged over its uselessness. The lowland berserker had called him Fennigyr as well. But this spring, on the top of Hob's Mountain, Kith had called him Nahag.

  It might have been a nickname.

  I focused on the bloodmage, whose face was smooth and blank, though his body shook with the effort of the magic he was using. I tried to say his name, but my throat wouldn't work right - I just couldn't form the word. So I thought it instead.

  Nahag.

  It wasn't just a nickname.

  I could see the reason bloodmages all went insane. Rather than looking like a brighter version of a ghost, Nahag's spirit was like a beggar's cloak, rags and tatters covered here and there by different colored fabrics, pieces of other people's spirit. I thought of the little bits I'd taken from the noeglins and the bits of myself I'd had to give in return, and was sickened.

  When I'd looked at Kith or Caefawn with his real name held tightly to me, I'd seen his soul, a rich, warm form enveloped in body and spirit. But the bloodmage's soul was small and dark, turned upon itself as if it could not bear to touch his corrupted spirit.

  One of the foreign bits belonged to Kith. I ripped it away: fury spurred my path without giving me a chance to wonder if I could do such a thing or how I could do it. As soon as it lost contact with Nahag, it disappeared from my sight.

  The other ragged bits fluttered and whined, disturbed by something. It was probably my imagination, but I thought they were trying to attract my attention to their unnatural plight.

  With no better plan, I decided to see what would happen if I took them away from Nahag, hoping the power he'd gained from the people he'd stolen from would abandon him.

  Like plucking geese, it was a job that soon grew wearying. I stopped now and then to look, but the mage was concentrating on the hob. I couldn't tell if I was doing any good or not.

  My head ached with effort, and something else was wrong, too. I'd damaged myself breaking Nahag's spell, but I didn't have time to worry about it. As my father said, "You have to finish what you start, Aren. Or all your work's for naught. "

  I curled my hands around the cedar and fought off the vision so I could continue to work.

  I had to rest, and took the moment to see how Caefawn was faring. His skin had lightened to a pale gray and sweat matted his hair, but otherwise he appeared unhurt.

  I looked beyond him and saw a circle of villagers ringing the three of us. They'd come, drawn here by Duck's riderless state, or perhaps by Kith's abrupt leave-taking. But they stayed well away from the silent, motionless battle in the center of the street. There was grim fear on most of their faces. I wondered if they feared the hob or the bloodmage, and decided it was probably both. However, one person had joined the fight.

  Rook approached the bloodmage cautiously. With a well-worn knife, he probed the magic that had kept the hob from hitting Nahag. Nahag made a brushing gesture and Rook wa
s tossed to the cobbles. He lay there for a few counts, rolled to his feet, and tried again.

  "Enough," whispered Nahag to the determined raider.

  "I won't let you kill him," said Rook. There was a fierce determination in his pose. I wondered if Caefawn had teased the bleakness from Rook's soul as well as he'd done it for me.

  "You can stop nothing. " Nahag's voice was tight with impatience. He spoke a few words and gestured - I recognized it as the same spell he'd thrown at me, and waited for Rook to react. Nothing happened; there was too little magic behind the spell.

  Rook looked almost as surprised as the mage. I'd given up hope, because my efforts hadn't seemed to do anything; but hope flared back again.

  Wary, but not yet overly alarmed, Nahag surveyed the villagers, dismissing them one by one and skipping over me to return to Caefawn.

  "Is it you? What have you done?" Nahag jerked his sword out of Kith and began a strike toward Caefawn.

  I grabbed as many of the captive spirits as I could and tore them free. The sword dropped to the ground, and the mage fell to his hands and knees with a guttural cry. Forcing my stubborn body to move, I walked forward. When I reached Nahag, I collapsed to the ground.

  He was trying to hold together the gaps in his spirit with magic, but his power was a thin and pale thing now. He didn't seem to know how to reach the magic of the land, the magic I used. I saw his gaze focus on the lowland berserker, and Nahag began to crawl toward him.

  "Hungry," gasped Nahag, his voice shaking. "I'm so alone. "

  Rook stepped forward, but I raised my palm and shook my head. I wasn't sure Nahag couldn't use the raider for something - I knew I could have. Rook met my gaze for a long moment and stopped.

  Nahag still held part of the berserker. I found it mainly because he was trying so hard to hide it. I don't think he understood who was attacking him until I took it away.

  He looked at me as if I'd betrayed him. Then he attacked with the remnants of his magic.

  Damaged as he was, he was stronger than I, and better trained. And I was so tired. His probings hurt deep inside my head, and all I could do was keep plucking foreign essences off him like a demented cook. One at a time now, because the damage inside of me was growing.

  "Finish the job, Aren," insisted my father, his face stern as he stood above my six-year-old self crying over a half-plucked goose. "Everyone has something to do here. "

  I'd dropped my staff somewhere. It was hard to fight off the visions.

  I ripped and tore until the only thing left of Nahag's spirit was a shredded, sorry thing - all Nahag without any extra fragments. He'd quit fighting me for the last few pieces; either he was too tired or he just didn't care anymore.

  I stopped because I didn't know what else to do.

  We stared at each other, Nahag and I.

  I don't know what he saw, but I saw what I'd nearly, very nearly, become. He'd been someone's son once, who hadn't had a friend to save him as Kith had saved my brother. He hadn't had Caefawn to teach him.

  His cringing soul expanded abruptly within the bonds of spirit. For a brief moment it hesitated, but the fragile spirit could not hold it and the soul drifted away. The spirit lingered an instant, then was gone.

  The mage closed his eyes. I looked at Rook and nodded my head. Rook's blade slid into the mage's neck. I wouldn't tell anyone the bloodmage had been dead before the knife slid home. The raiders needed all the credit they could get.

  "People," snapped Wandel. I turned and saw the harper holding his shirt over Kith's abdomen. "If we don't get him sewn up, he's going to die. "

  I felt a jolt of incredulous joy that cut through the numb exhaustion and wrongness. Kith was alive? I crawled toward them, then remembered Wandel was supposed to kill Kith. I stared stupidly at the harper, who met my gaze and frowned.

  "This village needs him. " He sounded defensive.

  I smiled at him with sudden euphoria. Wandel wasn't going to kill Kith. Not ever. He knew it, too; I could tell by the self-disgust in his voice. Neither Caefawn nor Kith was dead. At least not yet. There was an awful lot of blood on Wandel's shirt.

  Caefawn staggered to Kith, favoring his injured knee. He sat beside the Wandel and touched Kith briefly. Without taking his eyes off Kith, he held a hand back to me. "Aren, I need your help. "

  I reached out and took his hand. He stiffened, as he had under the bloodmage's spell.

  "Aren?" With the explosive swiftness I'd seen in him before, he turned toward me. The horror on his face made me want to cower away from him, but my body chose that moment to quit obeying me again.

  Could he see how close I'd been to becoming something he hated? Could he see the taint left on me? I tried to pull back, but my body moved toward his gentle tug.

  He took my face in his hands, and I could feel the touch of his claws resting against my skin. He'd taken his earring back from the bloodmage and rewoven it through his ear.

  "What did he do to you?" There was fear in his voice, and something in me relaxed when I saw I didn't disgust him. The familiar grip of his tail reassured me.

  My hand reached out and touched his jaw. His skin was smooth against my fingertips. He moved one of his hands from my face to catch my hand and flatten it against his cheek.

  Wandel said something I didn't catch.

  "I can heal his wound, but I need Aren to mend his spirit. Keep the pressure on here, while I try to undo whatever the bloodmage did to her. " But I could see that it wasn't worry for Kith that drove Caefawn.

  I'd always thought his flirtation was an attempt to obey the wishes of the mountain. The mountain who wanted him to mate so his race would continue and she wouldn't be alone. Motives I understood, both the mountain's and Caefawn's. I understood about loneliness.

  I stood by the too-shallow grave as the men piled half-frozen dirt on Quilliar's body. He'd always wanted to be buried in the winter because winter graves were heaped high with rocks and stones rather than the sunken places where those buried when the earth was soft rested.

  Warm lips touched my mouth gently. "No, Aren, don't go away. " I was wrapped in Caefawn's arms, cuddled against his warmth. His skin felt soft against my hands. The warmth of his tail, still curled about my ankle, made me want to smile.

  I opened my eyes and saw stark dread in his. He loves me, I thought.

  And I was dying.

  In my haste to regain control of my body, I'd ripped the ties between my spirit and my body. Nahag had already broken the bindings holding my soul. With Caefawn and Kith safe, I lacked the strength to hold myself together anymore. And, like Nahag, soon I would just drift apart.

  "If you go," Caefawn said, "Kith won't live. He needs you to mend his spirit. " His hands moved subtly on my back and neck, giving pleasure. He was doing it deliberately.

  "Not just any emotions," he said with a speculative look, as if he could read what I'd thought about him. "Only things that make your spirit want to stay with your body. "

  The soft, fluffy end of his tail caressed my cheek playfully. Faran take it, he knew I'd used the half-frightening desire I felt for him. It hadn't worked as well against the fetch as it had against the ghost. But it left me feeling things that were frightening, embarrassing, and. . . wondrous.

  "Aren. " He crooned my name in a husky voice that spoke of dark nights and snared passion, calling me back. But his eyes were desolate. He believed I was going to die, too.

  "What's wrong?" asked Merewich's voice.

  I knew I was dying. And I was.

  But. . . what if it was like with the fetch? What happened if I didn't believe it? What if - I thought, settling peacefully into Caefawn's lap - what if I was too stubborn?

  Caefawn tucked my head under his chin, presumably because his tears weren't something he thought would hold me, body, spirit, and soul. Listening to his shuddering breath, I decided he was wrong. I would not die and leave the hob alone. Slowly,
because it was all I could manage, I pulled a bit of magic from the land and began repairing the damage the bloodmage and I had done. It surprised me how little time it took.

  "So," I said diffidently and a bit hoarsely, "How can I help you with Kith?"