Patricia Briggs

by The Hob's Bargain

“Look, Aren, most of the bloodmages’ get commit suicide after a year or two. Kith’s lasted longer than any other. The berserkers understand—Kith understands—that they are dead already, it’s just a matter of time. If they’re lucky, they die in battle.”

  I left without saying another word.

  NINE

  The hob was waiting for me when I woke up the next evening. This time he was holding a mug of something steaming that smelled sweet and milky.

  “Here,” he said. “It’s a little chilly tonight. There’s a storm blowing in. I thought you might like something warm to start the night with.”

  I wiggled around until I could take it from him, then sipped it cautiously. Some kind of tea with honey, but the blend was nothing I’d ever tasted before.

  “Thanks,” I said. He intimidated me a lot less than he had the night before, but I decided not to ask him why he was here tonight.

  “I’ve come to teach you,” he said. “Don’t worry, I’ve cleared it with Koret. Tomorrow he’ll need you, but tonight’s mine.”

  I rolled my eyes at his mock leer, and he laughed. I didn’t ask him what he was going to teach me. I should have—then I could have refused while I had a chance.

  “BUT I DON’T WANT TO TALK TO GHOSTS.”

  The manor garden was unkempt, but still recognizable as deliberate planting. I was all too aware of the burial ground on the other side of the garden’s stone wall.

  “If you don’t learn how to use your abilities, you’ll be used by them,” he said. Hurrah, that sounded like fun. “Aren, you’ve got to learn to protect yourself. You can summon spirits, but by the same token you can be summoned by them.”

  “Why you?” I asked nastily. It wasn’t his fault, and I knew it, but he was there. “You aren’t a speaker.” Whatever that was.

  “Because there’s no one else,” he explained, though I could see him fight a smile. He seemed to get some sadistic enjoyment out of my whining. “On this side of the river, I can deal with ghosts if I have to. But I’m hoping you’ll be able to save yourself.”

  “How reassuring,” I said witheringly.

  This time he did grin. “Come on, lass. Likely you won’t be summoning anyone you know. It won’t hurt to talk a bit with the dead. If you can convince them to go on, as you did the ones who came to you last night, you’ll be doing them a favor.”

  “Great,” I said, shivering, though I wasn’t cold.

  Last night was a lot more frightening in memory than it seemed at the time. I was in no hurry to visit with more ghosts.

  I thought of a possible way out of it. “Hold up a minute. Didn’t you stop me from summoning the ghost of that poor skeleton?”

  “There is a difference between summoning a soul back to its dead remains, and calling a ghost which is merely spirit.”

  “What’s the difference between soul and spirit?” I asked.

  “People like you and I are made of body, soul, and spirit. The body is the physical and is tied very tightly to time. Humans are very rooted in the body—it’s why there aren’t more mages among you. Soul is what determines who you are—stubborn, impatient…the qualities that make you different from Kith or Koret. It is where emotions live. Hobs are tied most tightly to the soul. Spirit”—he hesitated—“spirit ties your body and soul together. It’s where magic abides and it can take on aspects of both your soul and your body. That’s why Touched Banar’s ghost looked like his mortal body. It’s why it was frightened as his soul was before it went on.”

  “So the soul and the spirit are immortal and the body is mortal.” I said.

  “Without the soul and body, the spirit usually dissipates after a while. If it doesn’t you get ghosts.”

  “So I’m supposed to call a wandering spirit for a chat.” Hello, I’m Aren and you’re dead. Didn’t sound like fun to me.

  He nodded. “A ghost is a human or animal who has died, but has chosen not to go on to the spirit realms. Calling someone who has already gone on is an act of evil.”

  “And it creates wraiths,” I speculated.

  “One way to get them,” he agreed. “Sit down.”

  I leaned my back against the garden wall and sank to my rump. The solid stone against my back was cold and damp. I crossed my legs.

  He crouched in front of me, gripping his staff. “Now think about the dead. Just ghosts. Wisps of memory and being left here where they no longer belong.”

  “They must feel frightened,” I said, thinking about it despite myself. Banar had been frightened.

  “Frightened,” it agreed, settling at my feet.

  “Who are you?” I asked. The hob hadn’t told me what to say to the ghosts when they came. I didn’t really want to interrogate it.

  “Mercenary,” it said, the whispery voice a little stronger. Fighting the war. Our side was losing and the man who hired us dead. No money in it anymore. Captain said, ‘Got to turn raider, boys. Lots of lords dead, estates left undefended. Find one of them.’” As it spoke, the wisps seemed to gather together and solidify.

  One of the raiders. I didn’t think it was one I’d killed.

  “It’s time to rest now,” I told him. I didn’t want to know what he’d do if he figured out I was one of the villagers.

  “Rest?”

  “You’ve done your duty, soldier,” said the hob. “Sleep.”

  The ghosted started when the hob spoke, as if it hadn’t noticed him there. Unlike the earth spirit, it didn’t seem to troubled by the hob.

  “Time to sleep,” he agreed, though he didn’t do anything but rest at my feet.

  I whispered, “Sleep.” I didn’t know why I whispered, but it worked. The ghost faded away.

  “That one was brighter than Banar was,” I said softly when it was gone.

  “The new ones glow almost as if they were still tied to a soul,” said the hob, though he was looking uneasily around the garden. “The old ones can be shadows so dark even I can’t see them unless they choose.”

  “Mistake, mistake, the mountain’s slave made a mistake,” crowed a voice from the wall over my head.

  I knew that tone, though I didn’t recognize the boy who bounced down on the ground in front of me. “Hob made a mistake. Hob made a mistake.” The singsong was unmistakable. The earth spirit’s servant wore the shape of a boy younger than Caulem. This one I didn’t know.

  “Quiet, shaper,” said the hob, his attention still elsewhere. “Your place is on the other side of the river.”

  The shaper turned to me with a bright smile, “Hob forgets a lot. Forgets my master is here, too. Forgets some ghosts are not so weak. Forgets old places have their dangers.”

  “The shaper’s right,” said the hob, his voice lifeless with failure. “Being around humans makes me arrogant. I came here because I knew there were recent dead wandering—bound to be, after a battle. Should have thought there might be older spirits here.”

  Defeat was something I almost couldn’t associate with the hob. Not even being left alone with only a mountain for company had given him such melancholy. Nor could I see any reason for it. I looked around suspiciously.

  “There’s a graveyard just over the wall,” I offered, because what he’d said made me wonder if he knew. “Caefawn?”

  The hob bowed his head and didn’t answer.

  “Show yourself,” I commanded the air at large.

  “Here I am,” chortled the shaper.

  “Be quiet or leave,” I said sourly. “I have enough to work out. If you interfere, I swear it’ll be the worse for you.”

  He subsided, except for a couple of smirks. I didn’t know what he thought I could do to him, but I was glad he was threatened enough to desist.

  “Show yourself, ghost.” I said again. “Caefawn, don’t you bring me out here, then leave me alone to deal with this thing.”

  It was there. Larger than the garden we were in, its substance covered the ground with a deep shadow.

  “Caefawn,” I said again. “Time enough for despair
when there’s nothing left to do.”

  “Hobs are emotional,” observed the shaper. “Ghosts affect them more than they do you mortals.”

  The shadows continued to deepen in the garden, frightening the moon’s light away. I reflected, not for the first time in the hob’s company, that cat’s sight would be extremely useful. Darkness crept over Caefawn, who was bent around his staff as if it comforted him.

  The shadows stopped at my feet.

  “Who are you?” it asked in a voice like fiddle music in the dawn. I thought that was supposed to be my question. “Why did you summon me?”

  “I am Aren of Fallbrook,” I answered it, as I had the earth spirit the day before. “I am here to be taught.”

  “Fallbrook,” it said. “Taught what?”

  “To speak to you,” I replied.

  Something touched me inside my head. It was the strangest feeling I’d ever had, as if something soft and ethereal drifted through my skin and bone. After an instant the touch turned to ice.

  “Warm it,” advised the shaper as he gripped both my hands and stared into my eyes. For once his face was serious. “Think of hot, rich food; the fire on a cold night; my master’s eyes. Think of touch and life and light.” Then, without loosing my eyes from his hold, he said in a different voice, “Hob, now would be a good time to help.”

  Would you like to join me?

  I shuddered with the icy jolt that shot from my head to my spine. I thought of fires and soup, hot green-brown eyes that flared to red in an elemental’s face.

  I am so alone here.

  Me, too, I thought before I caught myself. I’m so alone.

  The shaper slapped my face. “Warmth and living, Aren.”

  Warmth. The touch of Daryn’s hands on my flesh. Warmth slipped from his remembered touch to my cold skin. I concentrated on the one night we’d had, the passion and fire. When I ran out of memory, I built new ones. Dreaming about the dead didn’t seem like the right thing to do under the circumstances, so for the new ones I substituted coal-gray skin for sun-browned, the nip of fangs gently wielded, a tail wrapped around my ankle. Thoughts curiosity had brought to me after the bargain was struck. I asked the question, What would it be like to be wed to the hob? The answers came whether I willed them or not.

  The cold withdrew slowly, more slowly when desires replaced solid memory. So I tried another tack. I built the image of the gradual magic of rye and wheat pushing up through the earth, exchanging safe darkness for sunlight and warmth. Flowers opening for the first time to the dance of butterfly wings.

  It was gone, and I was breathing as heavily as a drowning victim just rescued. I expect the analogy occurred to me because my clothes were wet with sweat. It started to rain. Lucky me.

  “Good girl,” said the shaper. “Did well enough for a mortal—better than the hob.”

  Behind the shaper crouched the ghost. I felt no fear of it now, for it was mine. It could do no more harm unless I set it free.

  “But Caefawn’s no speaker,” I said with sudden knowledge of what that might mean. “The despair…that’s a ghost’s weapon, isn’t it? It doesn’t affect me.”

  Caefawn, his face drawn and remote, looked up from his staff. “That and fear. As a speaker you are immune to those and many other weapons of the spirit. The mountain could defend me from terror or gloom, not both. Not so far from her slopes.”

  Rather than tiring me out, holding the ghost under my control seemed to be giving me energy, as if I’d been drinking fizzies all night and was jittery with it.

  All beings had spirits, not just ghosts. I thought that if I wanted to, I might be able to take the shaper as well, though not the hob. Not yet. It was as if I could see the will that each possessed, and measure my power against them.

  See, said the ghost speaking secretly to me. See what we could do?

  “Should be more cautious,” advised the shaper. “Could have killed her seeing if she could protect herself from ghosts. My master would have been unhappy. He sent me to watch you.”

  The ghost looked up at me with its eyeless face, as if we shared a secret. The double vision I’d had with the skeleton came back, and I could see the ghost as it had been in mortal form—a woman with hair of bright brass and laughter sweet as the south wind. A woman who had been afraid to be alone, to die.

  Yes, her voice whispered in my mind, I could give you power. Magic you could use to make the villagers like you again. Make them do as they ought, appease the earth guardian. You could save them from themselves.

  I knelt until I was level with its face.

  “Go rest,” I said slowly because it was difficult to speak. “Sleep now.” It wasn’t a suggestion, as I’d made to the raider, for this ghost I controlled absolutely. “Be at peace.”

  The ghost faded, as the other had. As it did, I felt that odd surge of power and awareness drift away.

  I looked up into Caefawn’s eyes.

  “I didn’t bring her here to see if she was strong enough to protect herself from the ghosts,” he said.

  “What, then?” demanded the shaper petulantly.

  “He wanted to know if I’d give in to temptation,” I said suddenly, not realizing it until the words were out of my mouth. “‘Death magic, blood magic slips easy down the throat’.” I quoted an old lay softly. “Power calls with temptation’s demand.’”

  “I could have stopped you,” Caefawn said. “Now, while you’re just learning.” Could have killed me, I thought.

  “You didn’t have to,” I replied, getting to my feet like an old woman.

  Stiff and sore, as though I’d been fighting rather than sitting in a garden, I tottered forward and kissed the hob’s cheek. The surface was smoother than the skin my imagination had endowed him with. It was a relief to know I wouldn’t have survived to do the things the ghost had offered to me.

  The shaper hooted and blew raspberries, but the hob smiled as sweetly as if he read my thoughts.

  WHEN I TOOK MY PATROL THE NEXT NIGHT, THE HOB came with me. Though “with” might be the wrong word. He’d run ahead and jump out from behind trees, laughing when I jumped and swore at him

  “No need to swear so quietly,” he advised merrily. “The raiders are mostly in camp today. There’s a small party by Wedding Pass, but they’ll not cross our path.”

  I stopped short. “If there’s no danger, why are we patrolling?”

  He looked at me seriously for a moment. “Wouldn’t do to get dependent on me. The bargain’s for the survival of the village, remember. They need to be ready. Even when the raiders are taken care of, there are hillgrims, trolls, and a dozen other such nasties. I understand that in the past you’ve been protected here.” He gestured widely to indicate the valley. “Not having to worry about much but the occasional bandit or wolf. It will never be that way again.” He strolled through the field, passing an arm over my shoulder and letting his tail settle around my hips. “There was a reason the mages felt they had to bind the magic. Most of the wizards of the time felt the same way you do about bloodmages, blood magic. But they agreed to it all the same.”

  “Why not leave the lands to the wildlings?” I said. “There were other places to go.”

  He shook his head. “The wild was growing, pushing mankind back. I don’t know how it was other places.” He gave me a wry smile, acknowledging his tie to the mountain. “But here mankind was dying.”

  I walked with him, thinking about what he’d said. But I was also thinking about the arm slung so casually across my shoulders. Being courted by a hob wasn’t as different as it could have been. But it was different enough for me. I grinned to myself as I bent to unhook his tail.

  SO I DIDN’T TELL KORET THE HOB KNEW WHERE THE raiders were most of the time. When I patrolled, Caefawn joined me as often as not. Sometimes the earth spirit’s shaper came, too, never in the same shape twice but never again in the body of anyone I knew. When I wasn’t patrolling, the hob continued my lessons. Sometimes I wasn’t certain whether he w
as teaching me, teasing me, or courting me—often as not, it was all three.

  “Come on, then, the raiders aren’t going anywhere today,” he said, pulling me proprietorially in the direction opposite from the one I should be going.

  “And how do you know that?” I asked, though I fell in beside him willingly enough.

  He grinned and twitched his tail with mischief. “A few of my acquaintances are having fun tonight. They’ll do no harm—except to the raiders’ pride, and you’ll have more time to learn.”

  “Did you talk to your ‘acquaintances’ about the thefts in the village?”

  “None of them admit to it, though that’s no surety. If you could talk the people into leaving something out for the little folk, it might go better for them.”

  “Better for whom, the little folk, or the villagers?” I asked. “The widow Shona left a handful of cookies out last night, and this morning something had unwoven the better part of the blanket she was working and tracked blue dye all over the walls and ceiling.”

  The hob chuckled. “I’ll look at it. Happen I’ll recognize the footprints.”

  We crossed Fell Bridge. There was no guard there. The hob had advised against it, saying the raiders were unlikely to harm the crops before harvest, or to take any of Albrin’s livestock out of the valley. What went missing could be retaken closer to a time it would be of use. Put up a few herdsmen with the animals to guard against predators and give them orders to run at the first sight of the raiders. Koret had agreed. The raiders seemed to have the same philosophy, for no one had seen them on the manor side of the river since the last attack.

  “Where are we going?” I asked, climbing over a stone wall that divided one pasture from another.

  “To the bogs,” he said. “I’m hoping to find a few noeglins or maybe a will-o’-wisps. You’d like the will-o’-wisps: when they sing, the flowers bloom even at night.”

  We found a large rock to sit on by the edge of the Fell bogs. The air was damp and chilly despite its being summer. The bog smelled of rotting vegetation and sweet bogflower.

  “It’d be easier to do this inside the marsh,” Caefawn informed me. “But then we’d get wet and smell like a bog for days. We’ll try for noeglins first. They’re about as strong as ghosts, and guaranteed to fight you with anything in their power. They’ll be good experience for you.”