Patricia Briggs

by The Hob's Bargain

  “Aye, with a fair bit left over,” replied Ice. “If we get the chance to harvest them.”

  “Right, then.” The hob’s voice became brisk. “What you need is help with the raiders, and with the creatures who are returning to this valley. Without help, it seems likely that you won’t make it through the summer, let alone the winter. Am I right?”

  Merewich wiggled his eyebrows. “I wouldn’t have put it so bluntly myself, sir, but I suppose you’ve the right of it.”

  Caefawn nodded. “Well, then, I think I have a bargain for you.” He flexed his hands on his thighs. “As I have demonstrated, I can help you with the bandits. I know a fair bit more than you about the returning wildlings.” He smiled briefly, at some secret thought. “I can even help with the harvest. If I do these things, I require a gift in return.”

  “What is that?” asked Merewich.

  The hob’s face didn’t change, but I heard a hint of bitterness in his tone. As if he liked what he was going to say even less than he expected them to. “The sacrifice of one of your women of childbearing years.”

  Dead silence fell.

  Shock held me still. Clearly I remembered our conversation about the villagers—and about eating things. I wondered if he had been sounding me out for the position of sacrifice. Just how much did I owe these people? Gram would have said everything. I owed them because I was born as I was, with the power to see what could happen. I didn’t need the sight to tell me this was the village’s best chance for survival. Without the sacrifice the hob asked for, the village would die: I’d seen that last night in Koret’s eyes.

  “A sacrifice we cannot make,” said Merewich finally. “Our village would never survive it. Our priest could never sanction it. The changes we’ve faced are already driving many of us to extremes, pulling the village apart. My own wife does nothing anymore except rock in her chair and stare at the wall. If I allowed this, the village would destroy itself before winter or raider could do so.”

  “Not if I’m the one you sacrifice,” I said. Stupid, I thought, to die for the people who want you dead. Stupid woman. But if the villagers’ dislike of me would aid their survival now, I was willing. “Few would regard my death as—”

  “Death?” hissed the hob in surprise, ears flaring wide with a rattle of beads as he turned to look at me.

  I looked from his dumbfounded face to Merewich’s shocked countenance. I sat down where I was and began to laugh, though there was little enough humor in it. I don’t know why I hadn’t figured it out. He’d said he was the last one, the last of the mountain’s children—and she, the mountain, was insisting he do something about it. He felt like a sacrifice to her cause, and so he asked us for another. “I take it you don’t mean to burn me or cut out my heart as a tribute to the mountain?”

  The hob bounced to his feet and sputtered.

  Koret nodded his head gravely, though a dimple showed through his beard if you knew where to look for it. “I knew a man who traded from one island to the next. Spoke ten or twelve languages fluently. Managed to buy a pig when he thought he was bargaining for timber. Last I saw him, that pig was nigh on to a hundredweight and running his ship.”

  “Of childbearing years,” said Cantier. “Looking for a wife.”

  “I could agree to a wife,” said Merewich thoughtfully.

  The hob sank back to his former seat and buried his face briefly in his hands. His shoulders shook. When he raised his head he said, eyes bright with merriment, “I see I have brought a moment of great import down to mere farce. I’m lucky I didn’t end up with a hundred pound pig. Well, enough. Time to make the bargain more clear.”

  He paused, and I sensed there was magic being wrought. “One year from today we will meet again. If you all agree I have helped the village survive, you will present me with a woman of childbearing years to wife. Think on it long and hard, gentlemen, before you agree. Death might seem worse, but mating with a creature outside of your race is no light thing.”

  “I agree,” replied Merewich. “But something of this import requires the consent of us all. Koret?”

  “Agreed.”

  Only Cantier, the wily old fisherman, shook his head. “Nay, can’t see it, myself. Not without knowing who it is that will agree to wed him. My father always said never agree to a bargain that doesn’t have the particulars worked out.” He looked at me while he spoke.

  I couldn’t decline, not after having agreed to death. It would certainly be an insult if I did. The same reasons that made me an ideal candidate for death applied for marriage as well.

  “I’ll do it,” I said. It was my doing that had brought us to this point, after all. I had found the hob and enlisted his aid. How I felt didn’t matter.

  “Willingly?” prodded Cantier.

  I looked at Caefawn, who looked back at me. “Don’t push it,” I said. Caefawn grinned, his fangs gleaming in the bright sunlight.

  “All right, then,” said Cantier sourly. “I agree.”

  As he spoke, something happened. We all felt it.

  “The bargain is struck.” The hob sounded as enthusiastic as I felt: that is, of course, not at all.

  EIGHT

  Three days later, I woke up in the attic of the unoccupied house I’d been sleeping in since Kith told me to move camp until things in town quieted down. I think he believed I had moved farther away, but the deserted house on the east side of town suited me just fine. It had been deemed unfit to live in, but it worked for me.

  I’d been dreaming of red-eyed demons chasing me through a forest. The reason the demons bore a striking resemblance to the hob was obvious, even to someone who was not a priest trained in dream interpretation. However, I could find no reason for the hob to be lying at my feet.

  “Why are you lying at my feet?” I asked sharply—a result of sitting up too fast and hitting my head on a low beam. “How did you find me?”

  “The little folk told me where you’d be. I’ve tried to catch you at night the last couple of days, but you were gone. So I decided to try before it got dark.” The hob stretched, taking up even more space. His eyes glowed a little in the dark.

  “I’ve been patrolling,” I said in answer to his implied question. Little folk? What little folk? Fully awake, I was too intimidated by his presence, made even larger and darker in the confines of the attic, to ask him about little folk.

  “I’m afraid I told the big man—Koret?—that I would be borrowing you from him for tonight. I promised to see what I could do about the earthens, and I need you to do it.”

  “Earthens?” I asked, slipping out of my blankets and rolling them into a tight bundle. Yesterday’s clothes (which I had slept in) would just have to do. I wasn’t changing with the hob looking on.

  “The creatures that attacked your village were earthens. They’re the earth spirit’s minions, pretty harmless as such things go. Your folk were lucky the spirit is weak yet, or you’d have been facing something much nastier.”

  “Earth spirit?” I asked.

  “I think,” said Caefawn, “it might be better if I talk as we go. Koret explained it is important that no one find you here. If we continue to talk, the chances of someone discovering your sleeping place are greatly increased.”

  BY THE TIME WE WERE OUTSIDE THE VILLAGE PROPER, night had fallen. The moon was still in a brighter phase, but it was cloudy, so at intervals we were floundering (well, I was floundering) in darkness. I wondered why he’d picked me to go adventuring with instead of Kith or someone else more competent. Of course, there was the bargain between us.

  “Where are we going?” I spoke softly because we weren’t far from the village yet, having stopped just past the temple grounds.

  “I was hoping that you would have a better idea than I,” responded Caefawn.

  I thought for a while, then said, carefully, “How would I know where we’re going, when I don’t even know why?”

  “Form a picture in your mind of this half of the valley.”

  I
frowned at him, but he didn’t see because he’d closed his eyes. I could feel him gathering magic.

  “Do it, Aren. Please.”

  I tried, but it was like trying to decide what the roof of a building looks like from the inside. I’d never considered the valley as a whole unit, just bits and pieces, one connected to the other.

  “Mmm. Perhaps try one place at a time.”

  I started with the place I knew best, my parents’ house. I thought of it as it had been when Quilliar had been there. Ma’s roses in full bloom.

  “Move on.” The hob’s voice was dark as a moonless night, slipping into my vision without intruding. His magic cloaked me as warmly as a blanket in winter, and as comforting. The tension I’d felt in his presence dissolved and my vision shifted until I saw the house as it was now: deserted and sad, the roses withering from lack of care.

  “This isn’t it. Try somewhere else,” said the hob.

  I tried my cottage next. The thatching was thick and snug; bits of brown poked out of bare dirt near one wall where I’d planted starts from Ma’s flowers. There were a couple of slats broken on the pasture fence near the barn. A rabbit moved cautiously through the doorway.

  “That’s it,” said the hob, and his hands came down on my shoulders.

  A swooping feeling lifted me, like going over a high jump on a horse, but stronger. It was as if the whole valley were laid out before me. I could see the raiders as they went about their business, the patrollers who skulked in the shadows, an owl swooping upon an unsuspecting mouse.

  “What am I looking for?” I asked again, but as I spoke, I found it.

  An old snag marked the corner of Lyntle’s fields near the easternmost fields. The earth beneath the snag glowed as if there were a hidden campfire sending red and yellow flames to light the night. The rye, planted earlier this spring, grew over the top of the place, but it was stunted and off-color.

  “I found it,” I said.

  “I see it,” answered the hob. His arms dropped away. As soon as he released me, so did the vision.

  Dizzy from the abrupt change, I swayed; he steadied me.

  I stepped away from him. “Now tell me about this earth spirit and what we need to do to stop it.”

  Caefawn grinned at my peremptory tone. “Patience is not one of your virtues, is it? Very well.” He spread his hands wide in open imitation of Wandel beginning a story. He had been spying on the village. “Elemental spirits are the guardians of the world. They preserve the order. The mountain is an elemental, too—although less powerful than the earth spirit. The river has a spirit, too. I saw her myself a few weeks ago. When I lived here before, the valley belonged to an earth spirit more powerful than the mountain or river because of the villagers’ celebrations and sacrifices. As far as I know, the bloodmage’s meddling sent them all to sleep, and they are slowly awakening.”

  Was the hob one of the mountain spirit’s minions, as the earthens belonged to the earth spirit? “So the earth spirit who guards this valley is awake and angry. Do you know why?”

  The hob shrugged, leaning one shoulder against a tree trunk. Shadows covered his upper body. “Because your people farm the land and forget to ask permission and give thanks. The spirit, unlike the water guardian, who is fickle and mischievous, is a formal creature at heart.” “Why didn’t you tell me about this before?” I asked.

  “The mountain reminded me,” he replied apologetically. “As I told you, my memories are foggy. It has been a long time, and I didn’t deal with other guardians much.”

  “So I need to go talk to the earth spirit.” It didn’t sound like the smartest thing to do. Then again, if he killed me, I wouldn’t have to worry about next summer. “Why me? Why not you? Aren’t you the one who’s supposed to save the village?”

  The hob grinned. “It has to be a spirit speaker.” He dug the base of his staff into the dirt, making a hillock of earth. “Your village is lucky to have one. Do you remember what happened with the skeleton in the manor?”

  As if I could forget. When I wasn’t having nightmares about marrying bloodsucking demons, I was dreaming of skeletons with glowing yellow eyes. I nodded shortly.

  “It often goes with the visions, I think. Summoning the dead is something only a spirit speaker can do. If you were a bloodmage, you would be a necromancer….” Hestopped, considering his words. “I’ve heard the bloodmages took all the mageborn. How is it they didn’t take you?”

  “Women don’t make good bloodmages.”

  The hob snorted. “Fools! Magic comes where it will. And women are capable of as much evil as men.”

  “My good luck they were fools,” I said. “My brother wasn’t so lucky.”

  “Your brother is a bloodmage?”

  “No. My brother died so he wouldn’t become one.”

  “Ah.” The hob let Quilliar’s death rest in the night.

  A chill crept over my spine, and I twisted to look behind me. Thin white wisps clung to the branches and roots of the trees that bordered the temple graveyard. I froze, staring at them.

  “Don’t worry,” said the hob softly. “The talk of death draws them. They won’t hurt us. The graveyard has been restless lately—too many newly dead.” Poul had said something of the like the day I’d ridden to fetch the hob.

  “Ghosts?” My throat felt dry, and I took a step closer to the hob, who had ceased to scare me. The memory of his magic was especially comforting.

  Caefawn looked unperturbed. “Just a few of the restless ones, who have not yet gone on. Tell them to sleep.”

  A soft wisp touched my head and slowly took on a more solid form. As if my skin had allowed him to remember his form, Touched Banar sat on the ground and cuddled against my leg. He’d been small though wiry, but huddled next to me, he looked no older than a child. His thin hair was ruffled. Soot from the smithy fires smudged his face and clothes. The only thing different was the fear in his face.

  Death should put an end to fear. But in Banar’s eyes I saw the terror of his last moment. Pity drove away my jitters.

  “Go to sleep,” I said, using the words the hob had given me. “It’s time to rest.” I looked at the rest of the wisps, hoping Daryn and my family weren’t among them. “Go to sleep. You’re safe now.”

  They drifted back through the trees, some more slowly than others, but at last they were gone—except for Banar.

  “Banar,” I said, “they can’t hurt you anymore. Go to sleep.”

  I touched his cheek, and gently stepped away. As soon as I pulled my hand away from his face, he was gone. No white fog drifting away, he was just gone.

  “They won’t rise again,” said the hob after a moment.

  “What?”

  He smiled at me, and his tail wrapped about one of my ankles. Twice. “I told you, you’re a spirit speaker. Something as weak as those ghosts can’t defy you. When you told them to rest, they had to. You’d given the one more power by your recognition, and his fear gave him more. But names have power, too, even birth names. So he is at rest as well.”

  “Is that the right thing to do?” I asked, glancing uncomfortably at the hob’s tail.

  The hob shrugged. “Ghosts are spirit left when the soul has gone on. I’m not sure it matters whether they rest or not. They’re not like ghouls or wraiths, twisted souls denied peace. Like as not, the ghosts here would have been gone in a year or two anyway.”

  I decided I didn’t want to pursue it any further. “Right. All right. So much for ghosts. Tell me how we appease an angry earth spirit.” I wiggled my leg lightly against his hold.

  “First,” he said, pulling his tail away, “you have to dress the part.”

  “NO,” I SAID FIRMLY. THE CREEK CARRIED RUNOFF FROM the snowpack high in the mountains. It was cold—really, really cold—and I wasn’t going to get into it. Particularly not with the hob prepared to scrub me with a handful of moss.

  “It’s not that bad,” he coaxed. “From the smell of your clothes, you could use a bath anyway.” />
  I hope what I thought showed on my face. “I’m not going to strip off my clothes and freeze my rump off in the middle of the night with a stranger.”

  He widened his eyes in mock affront, but I could tell he was enjoying this. “How could I be a stranger?” I thought he was going to bring up our betrothal, but he was smarter than that. “We’ve fought side by side and shared magic.”

  I tapped my foot. “Sharing magic is not what I’m worried about.”

  He considered that a moment. “I’ll close my eyes.”

  “I thought you had to scrub me or it wouldn’t be a proper ceremonial bath.”

  “Aren,” he cajoled.

  “FARAN-ROTTING COLD SPRING,” I COMPLAINED, THEN squeaked. “You could be a little less thorough.”

  He ignored my complaints and took no more notice of my body than if I’d been a horse he was grooming. It was still curdling embarrassing—insulting, too, come to think of it.

  He dried me with a soft cloth, then wrapped my shivering body in a single piece of silk that caught the moon’s light and changed it into a thousand shades of green and gold. It wasn’t very warm. I couldn’t tell what made it stay where it was.

  “Quit fussing with it or it’ll be on the ground,” the hob warned as he took a step back to look at me.

  “I’m not fussing, I’m shivering.”

  He’d set aside his cloak when he started washing me. I snatched it from the ground and covered the sarong with it.

  He grinned, and I had the childish urge to kick him in the shins. “Now we have to do something about your hair. Sit on this rock.”

  He took my hair from its braids and combed it out until it hung past my hips.

  “There,” he said at last, satisfaction in his voice. “Now to find the symbols of the earth’s bounty. Wait here.”

  When he was gone, I found myself comparing these preparations with the ones I’d undergone for my marriage. Then it had been my mother and sister bathing me, preparing my hair. I drew Caefawn’s cloak tighter against the memories, choosing instead to worry about meeting with the earth spirit.