Patricia Briggs

by The Hob's Bargain

  We topped a rise into a small meadow flanked by steep mountainsides. On the far side of the meadow was a tight growth of brush and trees. I sat back, and Duck halted with a snort and toss of his head, mouthing the bit and making it jingle musically.

  “Faker,” I accused him. “I didn’t even pull the reins.”

  Duck snorted and took advantage of the loose reins to drop his head and snitch a mouthful of grass.

  “Well trained horses don’t eat with a bit in their mouths,” I informed him. He ignored me, so I turned my attention to Caefawn. “This is as far as Duck can go. There’s no way for him to get through that mess of trees, and the sides of the mountain are too steep for him to climb.”

  The hob nodded. “If you wait for me here, I’ll get what we came for. It’ll take me but a minute.” He strode across the meadow, then stopped. “We’ll be here a while after that, so you might as well unsaddle Duck.” He continued toward the greenery, keeping to a brisk walk for a few strides then breaking into a run—as if unable to contain himself another moment.

  I slid off Duck’s back and, following Caefawn’s advice, unsaddled him. After a moment’s thought, I took off his bridle. We’d become close comrades over the past few months. I didn’t think that he’d run off; the grass here was long and full of clover. I’d probably have a hard time getting him to leave it.

  I lay across a large, flat boulder. If I bent just right, I could avoid most of the sharp places. The grass was too wet to be comfortable. I closed my eyes, just for a while. I dozed, dreaming of a motherly woman who patted my hand and told me, oddly enough, that I was most pleasing. I couldn’t quite work up the energy to ask pleasing to whom or for what.

  “Sleeping again?” asked the hob.

  He was sitting beside me and, like Duck, he had a strand of grass sticking out of his mouth.

  “I usually do, if I’m up all night fighting hillgrims.” I rolled to my feet. “What is that?”

  He held a body length of cedar in his hands, twisted and knotted as cedar tends to be, though the end effect was a straight line. Long, stringy bits of bark dangled from it, and there were twigs of greenery here and there.

  “Cedar,” he said, as if I didn’t know.

  “And what’s it for?” I persisted with obvious patience.

  “For an anchor, my sweet. Cedar’s hold is as strong as its scent.”

  He broke off the remaining leaves, then drew one of his claws down the side of the limb to break the surface of the bark. He peeled the bark off in long strips, wet with the yellow tissue that protected the inner wood. When he was finished, he held a gaudy staff of wood striped pale and red, with knots and twists aplenty.

  “Take this,” he said, handing the staff to me.

  It was heavier than I expected. If it had all been stretched straight, it would have been half again as long, which explained the extra weight.

  “Now what?” I asked.

  “Well,” he said, “when you were telling me about your visions, I thought of a kite in the wind—tugged here and there, willy-nilly. It occurred to me that you needed a string to tie you to yourself, so when the wind blows, it cannot pull you too far without your consent.”

  “It looks more like a staff than a string to me,” I said, tongue in cheek.

  He snorted. “Feckless lass. It’s a serious business. I’ve seen you when the visions take you—you’ve no defenses. If that ghost had come when you were looking at some ancient ancestor of mine as he carved a silly warning in the rock, you’d be haunting my mountain even now.”

  “You’re calling me feckless?” I said with mock incredulity.

  He showed his fangs. “I’m not the one who ran into a camp of armed enemy, my sweet. The cedar might not help at all, I don’t know. But you can try.”

  So I sat on the ground with the staff across my legs, holding it with both hands. Caefawn folded his legs nimbly, one across the other, and faced me, tail twitching like an anxious cat’s.

  “Call the vision,” he said.

  While he was tutoring me in spirit-speaking, I’d realized summoning a vision wasn’t all that different from calling spirits. Some of the most powerful approached me, and the others might come to my beckoning. I hadn’t applied it to my visions yet, but this was as good a time as any to try.

  What I really wanted to know was what was happening with the raiders—but whatever it was that kept me from seeing them was still in effect. So I received something different.

  Music drifted from his strings, called by skillful fingers. Wandel hummed a bit with the music, absorbed in the chords he summoned. He stopped abruptly and shook his head. He played four or five notes over several times, varying the last note until he was satisfied.

  “Come back now, Aren.”

  When I had visions, it seemed like my body became less real than the sights or sounds that passed through my mind. This time was no exception, but the cedar staff held substance my body did not. Even as I thought about it, I broke free of the vision.

  “It worked,” I said, smiling. Both Caefawn’s prop and my new technique. It wouldn’t save me from falling off Duck when a vision struck (which I’d done once), but at least I could avoid lying around waiting for marauding hillgrims (or whatever new creepy-crawly appeared next) to find me.

  He matched my smile with one of his own. “Good. Cedar’s pull is not all that strong. Once you understand how it works, you can do without it. No sense getting dependent on props. Try it again.”

  I tried the raiders’ camp again, but instead of focusing on the raiders, I tried to picture Rook’s face. I hadn’t tried an individual before, and this time the sight started to come to my call. The sensation of pressure against my temples was almost too strong to bear. It wasn’t exactly painful, but extremely uncomfortable. I kept my eyes open, mostly to see if I could.

  Caefawn’s face faded to blackness, but nothing replaced it but the strong smell of meat cooking over an open fire.

  “So what are we going to do now?” The voice belonged to Rook’s Quilliar.

  “I don’t know.” Rook’s voice was unhurried. “I suppose—it’s time to come back now.”

  His voice slid into Caefawn’s deeper tones.

  This time it was easier to pull back to myself. Maybe because the vision wasn’t as strong, but I felt as if I were controlling it rather than the other way around.

  “Good,” said Caefawn, as my eyes refocused on his face.

  I grinned in triumph. Not only was I learning to control my vision, but I’d gotten past whatever it was that guarded the raiders. Before I could tell him, though, the sight caught me up in an implacable grip. The strength of its hold made my attempts to avoid it seem like the fluttering of a chick just hatched. The smell of cedar faded to nothing.

  When the hob was trying to get me to find the earth spirit, I’d had the sensation of soaring over the ground. Now I felt a sensation very similar. I could see…

  …the two of us staring at one another, the hob’s tail wrapped around my wrist and his hands at my shoulders before I was pulled away. The Hob—the mountain version—lay beneath me and I floated over her ridges and past them to Silvertooth’s broken body, which was covered with new growth of grass and thorn. Something grabbed me, and my speed increased until the ridges below me became a blur. Then it stopped. I couldn’t be certain where I was, for the trails and ridges were no longer familiar. But the man…I knew the man.

  He rode a dark horse and wore a bloodred cloak. Behind him trotted three men dressed in black, Kith’s old uniform, on horses tired and wet. Rain poured down as the sky wept. Lightning flashed and the wind turned branches into whips that beat and slashed at those who dared ride through the weather.

  For an instant, then again as lightning scrawled across the sky, I could see the rocky outcrop topping the crest of the mountain they rode around. One of the horses stumbled over nothing. His rider called something—I could hear his voice but not his words. The front rider stopped his horse and liste
ned. Lightning flashed, and his white face stood out in bas-relief. Mad eyes in a face that might have come from any family in Fallbrook—though his features were oddly misshapen, melting from the fire beneath. Gray threaded through his mahogany hair, the contrast more vivid because of the additional darkness the rain lent to the rest of his hair.

  The bloodmage shook his head and goaded his horse on with sharpened spurs.

  “Come on back, love,” said the hob.

  It was his voice this time, not the staff, that anchored me and drew me back. The smell of green cedar sharp in my nose, I turned to Caefawn.

  Fear and rage fought for ascendency. The fear was for Kith, for I knew of nothing else that would have brought the bloodmage here. He had come to kill his creation. Buried underneath was another fear. Too many people who didn’t like me knew what I was. The bloodmage would find out and demand my death, as was his king-and god-given right—the price of that long-ago binding of the wildlings.

  Fear shortened my breath and caused my limbs to tremble, but it was the rage that won.

  My lips drew away from my teeth, hating the raiders had been too difficult. Their Quilliar was no more evil than my Quilliar had been, though it had taken the hob, death, and the duplication of my brother’s name to show me that. Their Quilliar had been a sheepherder; Rook (so my vision of him had told me), a lord far more able and kind than Moresh. In a different world they would have been men just like my father and husband, perhaps better men. My parents’ death, my husband’s death were the fault of some cosmic madness that haunted men of war—deaths I might have been able to stop.

  My brother’s death, though, belonged to the bloodmage. As the disaster that had descended upon Fallbrook belonged to the bloodmages, all of them. Without them there would have been no unraveling of the binding. No war. No mercenaries-turned-bandits. So I gave Moresh’s mage the guilt for all of the deaths of this spring and summer, for every evil thing that had befallen me and mine.

  There was some inconsistency in my logic—I knew it even then—but anger clouded my thoughts, and it felt good. I gathered my righteous rage around me like a warm blanket. There was someone to blame for this. I’d thought the bloodmage dead, safe from my wrath. I felt the fury pounding in my blood as if Quilliar’s death were just yesterday.

  “Aren!” Caefawn peered worriedly into my face. “Aren, what did you see?”

  I tamped the rage down gently for later use and said, “Moresh’s bloodmage is coming back. I saw him on the old road that runs around the back of Faran’s Ridge, near Mole Rock.” Caefawn frowned, coming to his feet and pulling me to mine. “He’s come for Kith—to kill him.”

  “When?”

  “Moresh gave him three months. Until last spring planting. When the mountain fell, when Moresh died, I thought that would be an end to it.”

  Caefawn shook his head. “Not yesterday; there was no lightning storm on the ridge yesterday. Not today either, or at least not this morning, although it might rain on the ridge between now and nightfall.” He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. After a moment he opened them and shook his head. “The mountain says there won’t be such a storm today. Maybe tomorrow.”

  “Which puts him at the village tomorrow, or possibly the day after.” I hugged myself tightly, though I wasn’t cold.

  Time was giving me perspective, and I felt the rage seeping away. Moresh’s bloodmage was no more responsible for my situation than the raiders were. He’d once been a victim, too: I’d never heard of anyone apprenticing to the bloodmages happily. Remembering the relief I’d felt giving him all the guilt and fear that were mine, it was easier to understand the villagers who hated me.

  Rage or not, the bloodmage had to be stopped. Though it would have been nice to have more time to prepare, it really didn’t matter. I knew what Kith would do—nothing. He’d believed all along that he was living on borrowed time, and he didn’t seem very willing to fight for more. Albrin would fight—but he was not yet in shape to be any help. Koret was a trained fighter, but he knew nothing of magic. In any case, the village needed Koret in order to survive; I couldn’t risk getting him killed. No more than I would risk Caefawn in a battle that was not his.

  There was no one to fight the mage except me.

  “So how do I fight a bloodmage?” I asked him.

  I noticed for the first time that the hob’s ears were pinned back against his skull, though his smile was easy enough. “That’s a very good question, but you’re asking the wrong person. You forget what the bloodmages did to my people. I was there—and didn’t fight very well.” His hand flexed on his staff. He continued softly, “I don’t remember it, but I dream of it every night.”

  “You couldn’t have done anything,” I said, his pain drawing me out of my preoccupation with the bloodmage. “You were wounded so badly your people gave you to the mountain because they could not help you. What could you have done that your people did not? From the stories I’ve heard about the binding, the magic was worked far from here, far from the Hob. There were no battles to be fought. It’s said they sacrificed a dragon to power the spell. If the mountain couldn’t fight it, there was nothing you could do.”

  “Whatever happened, it is long since over,” he agreed bitterly. Bitterness was not something I would have credited the hob with, though he had cause for it.

  I didn’t want to hurt him further and risk bringing back memories that the mountain had seen fit to take. However, still less did I want to face the bloodmage without any idea of how to oppose him. So I rephrased my question.

  “Have you battled anything with magic?”

  “Yes,” he said curtly. “Though when it was and what it was I don’t know. Detailed advice wouldn’t help you anyway. Your powers are not my own, but they are not the bloodmage’s either. Use that against him.”

  “Use what?” I asked, losing my own battle with bitterness. “Visions? Shall I ask him to meet me in the night so I can call up ghosts? Ghosts he can doubtless use better than I can—death dealer that he is.”

  He spread his hands apart in a gesture of surrender. “I have nothing more to offer you. I’m not certain there is a way to vanquish such a one, but I’ll help as I can.”

  “No,” I said. I didn’t want to risk the hob, not just because he was the key to the village’s survival, but because I didn’t want to risk losing him as I’d lost so many people I loved. I stared at him, and admitted to myself that I loved him.

  Caefawn rose to his feet, shaking out his cloak. He said mildly, “I swore to help the village survive. If I think that its chances are better with Kith alive and willing to fight, it’s no one’s business but my own. Come, I’ll escort you far enough so that you can find your own way back. Then I need to look into a few things.”

  I WASN’T SLEEPY AT ALL ON THE RIDE BACK. IF THE mage wasn’t enough, there were the berserkers who followed him. One-armed, Kith’d been able to stand off the raiders for the better part of a day. What could he have done had he been whole?

  To fight the berserkers, the village only had two well-trained fighters. Two. And one of them wouldn’t fight. I knew Kith—better now than before he’d left for war. He’d already accepted his death, distancing himself from people whenever possible. Not only because he’d been altered by magic into some kind of superior soldier, as I’d thought when he’d first returned, but because he knew he had only a short time to live. He wouldn’t fight it, because deep inside he felt that he deserved nothing better. He’d been tainted with death magic, and the One God taught that such men were already dead.

  Koret was good, but he had nowhere near Kith’s proficiency. I’d seen them spar a time or two, and even I could tell the difference. He would stand little chance against the bloodmage’s men.

  There was Wandel. From what he and Kith had said, they both considered him able to fulfill the king’s command to kill Kith if Moresh failed to do so. I thought about the harper, who was even now writing songs of thanks to the earth, and wondered how he’d
stand up against a berserker.

  Duck tripped over a small, downed tree hidden beneath a clump of grass. I noticed then that we were alone; Caefawn must have decided I could find my way down from here.

  He would help, he’d said so—there was no reason to feel abandoned. A sudden thought caught me like a fist in my stomach. I remembered his ears pulled back against his head like a stallion whose territory was threatened. I sat back, and Duck stopped.

  He wouldn’t, I thought, not so far from the mountain, where his powers would be little better than nothing. But even as I thought it, I worried. The woods were his element, and even so far from the mountain he might feel confident. Three berserkers and a mage against a hob—would those odds worry the hob, who ate (if he could be believed) hillgrims for breakfast? Who’d greeted my suicidal run this morning with laughter and a “be smarter next time” speech?

  I tried to convince myself I was wrong. But all I could see was the look in his eyes when he told me that he, of all people, would be of no use against a bloodmage. It wasn’t just sorrow there, or anger. It was guilt.

  Who better than I to understand that? By virtue of my sight, I’d been given guilt enough to fell an ox. Guilt for Daryn and my family. Guilt for surviving when they had not. How much more would the hob feel it? He was the last of his kind, the only one the mountain had saved.

  I threw myself forward, and Duck, catching my sudden urgency, took off like a shot. He was traveling far too fast for the track, but I didn’t care. I had the sick feeling I’d traded one person I loved for another. I didn’t want to be responsible for anyone else’s death, least of all Caefawn’s. If I could get to town soon enough, perhaps I could arm the village—or at least the patrollers. If I could get enough people and run them up to Faran’s Ridge, maybe Caefawn would stand a chance.

  The track we followed turned onto a trail both Duck and I recognized, and he stretched out even more. Running downhill always felt like falling to me, with the horse frantically trying to get his feet down faster than his body.