The Hobs Bargain Page 7

Chapter 7

 

  SEVEN

  By the time we got back to the village, it was almost dark. I slipped off my perch behind Wandel before we quite stopped. The Lass crow-hopped twice, making the harper soothe her so he could dismount. She hadn't liked carrying double.

  "Melly!" I called from the yard.

  She came to the door of the inn, wiping her hands on her apron. "What is it? Oh, lords and ladies, it's Albrin. And Kith as well. " She dashed into the public room briefly and returned with a number of patrollers who were gathered at the inn before practice.

  "No, no," she commanded as they started to take Albrin from Kith. "Wait. I sent Manta and Ice to get the door from the kitchen. He's been jostled enough. "

  The Beresforders had wasted no time; they showed up with the kitchen door on the heels of Melly's words. Carefully, Albrin was lowered to the door.

  When I started in behind the boys carrying Albrin, Melly stepped in front of me. "Oh, no, you don't. You don't look much better than he does. I'll have too much help as it is, don't you frown so. I'll do better not having to clean you up off the floor, too. You go right on in there and pour yourself some of the mead I've heating by the fire, missy. When we've settled Albrin, I'll have a dinner brought to you. I've seen less tired faces on corpses, child. In with you. "

  As Albrin was carried up the stairs, I hovered in the doorway until Melly's flapping apron drove me into the tavern. I took a clean mug from behind the bar and poured it full of the sweet-smelling mead. Though the tavern itself was empty, I could hear noises from the public room beyond that indicated people were there.

  Peering through the doorway, I saw a couple of the fishermen eating dinner at one of the tables. Engrossed in conversation, they didn't look up as I wandered in. The only other person in the room was Koret, slumped against the back wall with the remains of whatever he'd been drinking in the glass. From the look of the table, the helpers Melly had commandeered had been drinking with Koret. I don't know why he hadn't come himself.

  He looked up and raised his eyebrows when he saw me. I brushed at my clothes somewhat ineffectually, but there really wasn't much I could do. I sat down opposite him, gingerly, stretching my leg out before drinking the warm mead.

  "I heard you rode out after Kith," he said. His voice slurred slightly. "Not the smartest thing to do. "

  "No," I agreed, wondering if his surprise was at my survival rather than at seeing me here. Perhaps I ought to be offended.

  "Kith's here. Wandel and Albrin, too," I told him, though he knew, already. "I'm not certain if Albrin's going to make it. They sent me here to get me out of the way. " There was a spill on the tabletop and I touched it with my finger, pulling the moisture around in odd patterns.

  Koret nodded, but he didn't look excited. "Live today. . . die tomorrow or next week like the rest of us. I'm not certain it matters. "

  I narrowed my gaze on him. "Actually, I didn't go out after Kith - at least not at first. "

  Koret knew how to listen even when he was depressed and half-drunk. He waited patiently, letting the silence linger between us like the caress of old lovers, expectant but not demanding.

  "Do you remember what I told you about the thing that attacked me on the mountain this spring? That someone killed it and healed my arm before Kith and Wandel found me?" Deceptive Wandel, sweet-tongued killer. "That the harper and I found an inscription there on the side of the mountain?"

  Koret nodded, straightening a little - though I think it was discomfort rather than interest sparking the move.

  I looked down at the table. "With the raiders controlling Fell Bridge, with Albrin's people and the manor folk gone, I knew it was only a matter of time before the village died, too. "

  Koret gave me a small smile and sipped his ale. Doubtless, I thought, he'd seen it long before I had. He was experienced in warfare. My bench wobbled as Merewich seated himself beside me. I hadn't seen him when I'd come in. He topped my mug from Melly's pitcher.

  "So I went for help. " I looked at the table, wondering how I could get them to believe what had happened when I hardly believed it myself. "I found the hob - or at least a hob. "

  "So what is a hob?" asked Merewich.

  "Well" - I considered the matter - "he's. . . not what I expected. " I thought of how I trailed behind him, my hand wrapped around his tail, and grinned.

  "How much of this has she had?" Merewich asked Koret.

  "Rather less than he has," I said, though I could feel my thoughts clouding pleasantly. Adding mead to no sleep and no food wasn't an aid to clearheadedness.

  I sat forward and braced my elbows on the table, trying to put the hob into words. "He told me to call him Caefawn. I told him. . . I don't remember what I told him. He took me to the manor to show me what he could offer - in return for something the village has that he needs. The raiders were everywhere. He killed some. So did I. But most of them he put to sleep or had chasing a white stag hither and yon. " I took a deep swallow of the mead, feeling the warmth of it seep to my bones. I decided I was more tired than drunk. "He wants to meet with the village elders tomorrow. He said something about a hob's bargain. I think he wants to help. I think he might be able to. " Certainly I was more tired than drunk. More tired than anything now, with the mead taking the soreness from my knee.

  "Tomorrow morning?" asked Merewich.

  "What does the hob want?" asked Koret.

  "Don't know. " I yawned and folded my arms on the table, resting my forehead against my forearms. I closed my eyes.

  I could feel the two men stare at me. The bench shifted as Merewich moved toward Koret.

  "What do you think?"

  Koret grunted, then said, "If I hadn't heard the stories of what the Beresforders faced getting here, I'd not believe it. But. . . I suppose we'll know in the morning, eh?"

  "I want to believe it," confessed Merewich, almost in a whisper. "I want to believe it very much - but I don't trust in hope anymore. "

  We marched up through the earth and into the enemy's home. Wooden boards and a heavy cloth covered the dirt beneath my feet, but I could still feel the earth's reassuring presence. . .

  I awoke wide-eyed and breathing hard through my nose. Without questioning why I was in a strange room, I swung my legs from the bed and darted for the door. I bolted down the inn stairs, ignoring Koret and Merewich, who were running out of the public room. I sprinted to the barn to collect my crossbow.

  Too late, I thought, too late - but I hurried anyway.

  The night air was still. The moon shone silver and gilt as it touched the cobbles of the inn yard. The stones in the yard cut into my feet, and I stubbed my toe on something in the dark barn before my scrabbling fingers snagged my crossbow. Next to it I found the quiver with the pouch that held the goatsfoot.

  Too late, I thought feverishly, too late.

  Only a short way down the street from the inn the alarm bell was lit by the faint glow of the moon. The alarm bell was closer than the baker's house.

  The moon's illumination allowed me to take the flight of stairs that led to the bell rope without slowing. Caefawn must have been right about my knee - I hardly noticed it. Rough hemp cut into my fingers when I set my weight against the rope. I had to do it twice before the clear tolling of the bell rang through the streets.

  For a moment the stillness of the night continued, then people spewed from their houses, children in the arms of adults. The crowd grew with silent efficiency, gathering around the bell to find out where the attack was coming from. The response was better than the last drill Koret had run.

  "Belis!" I shouted to the quiet crowd, leaving off ringing the bell. "Has anyone seen the baker?"

  They were beginning to murmur a bit and shuffle around. I stepped up on the railing, holding one of the bell posts for balance as I tried to look over the crowd to see the fringes. Belis lived in one of the outskirt houses, farthest from the river. It would
take him longer to reach us.

  If he could.

  I had seen just enough of the house in my vision to recognize the rug Gram had given Belis in return for a winter's supply of bread. I still wasn't certain what had invaded his house, but I had the impression that his house wasn't the only one they'd tunneled their way into. Merewich and Koret were working their way through the crowd - it occurred to me that if something didn't happen soon, I would have some explaining to do.

  No one would listen to me without proof, not if matters had gotten far enough out of hand that the villagers killed Touched Banar. If Kith were in the crowd, it wouldn't have mattered. No one gainsaid Kith, and I could count on him to back me up. But Kith didn't come out of the inn.

  Just as I was ready to give in to despair (too late, too late), I saw a group of people coming down a side street from the north side of town. Belis, tall and thin, stood out from the crowd, and I felt something inside me relax.

  I set the nut and pulled out the goatsfoot, using it to draw the string to the nut and hook it. I pulled a bolt from the quiver and set it in place. The bow at the ready, I aimed for the darkness behind the small group of people who joined the rest of the village.

  "Aren?" Koret's voice was a soft murmur as he mounted the stairs. Cautious.

  It occurred to me that I must appear a bit touched, standing on the railing, wearing a man's nightshirt, and aiming a bow at the shadows no one. . . But they ought to expect madness from someone who saw visions. Visions that had saved at least one man this morning.

  There! I loosed the bolt and drew again, swearing at the time it took. After half a season's drilling, I no longer felt the strain in my forearms every time I cocked the bow, but it was not effortless and I wasn't as fast as I should be. The crossbow was not as quick as a longbow, and Kith, using one of the stirrup-drawn wooden bows, could outdraw me even with only one arm. But I could shoot almost as far as a good longbowman, and I hit what I aimed at.

  "Damn it, girl," bellowed Koret, reaching for my bow, but a shout near the northeastern corner of the crowd stopped him.

  There was a shift in the people as they turned to face the enemy gradually emerging from the side street Belis had come from only a few moments earlier. Someone called an order; children began to filter in from the edges to gather under the bell podium. All at once the relative hush of night gave way to the roar of battle.

  Koret charged down the ladder, drawing his sword and leaving me to shoot at will. I loosed a bolt at another movement in the shadows.

  Finally, from the darkness of the side street, a swarm of. . . something boiled into the street. In the uncertain light, I couldn't see them well. Better, I thought, if I didn't.

  As ferociously as the villagers fought, we could not press back the tide of creatures. They were smaller than a man - I could see that much - perhaps only half as tall, though wider in the shoulders. Like a plague of locusts, there seemed to be no end to them.

  They weren't hillgrims. If they had been, there would have been a lot more villagers lying in the mounting pile of bodies. Instead of the graceful movements of the grims, these new creatures moved with the stolid slowness of a great bull. Their arms hung almost to the ground, muscular and wickedly powerful - but mercifully slow. The villagers quickly learned to avoid the blows, and after the first few minutes I didn't see anyone fall. All the same, they pressed the villagers back by sheer strength of numbers.

  Before I ran out of quarrels, Manta dashed up the stairs with two handfuls of bloody shafts.

  "Here," he said shortly. "Koret sent these, says to stay where you are. You're doing more damage here than you would in the thick of things. "

  He was gone before I could thank him. The arrows were warm and damp, and I wished for my gloves, which were, I supposed, somewhere in the inn with my clothes.

  In the end it was the sun that saved us. As dawn began to show over Faran's Ridge, the creatures turned and sped away faster than they had come.

  Spent, I slipped from my post on the railing. Laughter came unbidden - for once my sight had been in time. Just this once - but it helped make up for all the other times when I'd been too late. It was quiet laughter with a slightly hysterical touch, so I let it drift to silence beneath the soft moaning of the wounded lying in the streets.

  I wiped my bloody hands on the tail of my borrowed nightshirt. It was unmannerly to stain someone else's clothing, but I couldn't bear the feel of the blood any longer. My hands ached from setting the goatsfoot. Training made me load the crossbow once more before I climbed down the stairs to see what it was I'd been killing.

  Geol the cooper was surrounded by a group of people trying to stanch several wounds. Talon the smith sported a nasty gash on his forearm that he was awkwardly trying to bandage. Before I could offer my help, his wife bustled up to him. The bootmaker, Haronal, had a throwing ax embedded in his skull.

  I didn't see any of the creatures bodies. At last I saw Koret kneeling beside a shuddering form near an alleyway, and went to him. The body was one of the things we'd been fighting.

  It was vaguely human in feature, more so than the hillgrim. Standing, it (or rather he - the creature wore no clothes) might have been waist high. Curly, dark hair covered his head and the lower part of his jaw. His features were manlike, except he had no eyes. A horrible wound opened his belly, revealing internal organs.

  "Is this what attacked you on the Hob?" asked Merewich, who'd joined us.

  I shook my head, staring at the dying creature. If it had been human - a raider, maybe - I'd have been down on my knees holding the wound together and calling for someone to sew him up. It wasn't human, but it wasn't. . . Before I could decide if I wanted to try to save it, it died.

  "Maybe the hob will know what he was," I said hollowly.

  "Wait until you see this," said Koret intensely. "Wait. "

  The weak morning light touched the body, allowing me to see clearly what was happening to it. The tip of his nose and the ends of his fingers and hands changed, darkened, began to flake off.

  Cracks split the skin of his face. The bloody gash in his abdomen quivered, filling suddenly with a dark, ashy matter that covered the details of the wound. The process sped up as it progressed. Each break in the creature's skin gave way to a multitude, until there was no body left.

  Koret squatted on his heels and put his hand in the residual substance. My lips curled back in disgust as he rubbed it back and forth between his fingers, then held it up to his nose to smell.

  "Mulm," he said, standing up and dusting his fingers lightly together. "Good planting soil. "

  "Pirates," commented Merewich sadly. "They have no sensibilities. "

  "Ah," replied Koret with a grin that told me at least part of his nonchalant manner was for our benefit. "I have noticed how delicate your sensibilities are, Merewich. That is why I didn't taste it. " He wiped his hands on his pant leg. "So Aren," he said, "what made you come out here and ring the bell?"

  "I dreamed," I said. "I dreamed I was burrowing up through the basement of Belis's house, prepared for battle. When I woke up, I realized it hadn't been a dream. "

  "How did you know that it wasn't a dream?" asked Merewich.

  I shrugged uncomfortably. "I don't know. " I looked for something else to talk about and said, "Where's Kith? I would have thought that he'd be out here in the fighting. "

  Merewich shook his head, "He collapsed after he got his father settled. Wandel said that it was to be expected after the day he'd been put through. I've never seen anyone fall into such a sound sleep so fast. I imagine he didn't even hear the alarm. "

  Koret had been looking over my shoulder as Merewich talked. He frowned suddenly. "Aren, I'd like you to go meet the. . . hob this morning. It's going to take a while to get everyone calmed down and decide who should meet with him. We'd like you to explain what happened, and see if you can't get him to be a little patient with us. "

  I
nodded my head and started for the barn. I was saddling Duck before I connected Koret's frown, his sudden anxiety about the hob, and the way the villagers fell back, whispering and afraid, out of my path as I walked to the stables.

  He was worried the attack would give added spark to the anger against magic - against me. It hurt. It didn't matter that I was the one who warned them. It only mattered that the creatures were wildlings, reminding everyone how evil magic was. I wondered what they'd think of the hob. Maybe they'd turn away from the only chance they had of saving themselves because the hob was a wildling.

  Koret met me at the door of the barn and handed me a stone ax. "Take this with you. It belonged to one of our attackers. Maybe the hob will know something about them. "

  I took the weapon and mounted Duck before I replied.

  I wanted to make certain he wouldn't hear how upset I was. "I'll ask. "

  As I approached the manor, I patted Duck's sun-warmed shoulder, more for my comfort than his. The silence of the abandoned building reminded me too much of Auberg. It was like some sort of spreading disease. By winter, Fallbrook might be shrouded in stillness, too.

  The building was not fortified or designed for heavy defense. Generations ago there had been a great wooden fort, but the valley was too isolated to see much fighting. When Lord Moresh's many-times-great-grandfather had decided to modernize the old fort, he'd settled for a stone-walled manor. The walls were thick and the windows on the first floor were narrow, but that's as far as he'd gone for security's sake. It still would have taken more than the bandits' group to take the building if the lord's contingent were there.

  I rode to the main entrance and dismounted, slipping the bit from Duck's mouth when it became apparent that no one else was there. Thus freed to eat, Duck nibbled on the long grass. The quiet munching sound was soothing, allowing me to ignore the hollowness of the building behind me.

  The sun hit the grass and released its fragrance into the air. Like the smell of fresh-baked bread, the rich earthy scent was cheering. I couldn't change the villagers in a season, but perhaps time would help. When they weren't as frightened by the attack, maybe they'd remember I'd saved them from a surprise attack. Maybe Duck would sprout wings and fly.

  I yawned, closing my eyes. When I opened them again, the hob was holding out an oatcake to me.

  "Almost given you up," I commented, trying to sound nonchalant as I took the honeyed oatcake. As I took a bite, I realized I hadn't had anything to eat since I had gone to practice yesterday - no, the day before yesterday.

  The hob sat cross-legged on the ground beside me, his cloak set to one side, munching on the twin of the treat he'd handed me.

  "Sorry," he said. "I've been here a while. Waited a bit to see if others were coming, too. "

  He appeared to be enjoying his cake. I couldn't tell if he was concerned about the absence of the elders or not.

  "They'll be along," I said, finishing the cake and accepting the waterskin he handed me. I drank (it was water, as far as I could tell) before explaining about the attack. "It could take the rest of the morning to get folks calmed down enough to listen, but they'll be here. "

  "Ah," he said, licking his fingers. I noticed he was careful to avoid touching his claws with his tongue. They must be as sharp as they looked.

  I turned away so he wouldn't see me smile. It was odd seeing him doing something as human as licking his fingers, even if his tongue was black and his fingers had claws. It was odder still to find myself more comfortable in his company than I was with most of my fellow villagers. I'd known him a very short time, but that was enough for me to get used to his gray skin, fangs, and cat-eyes. Even his tail.

  When I was sure I had control of my face, I turned back to see him watching me quizzically. When his left ear twitched at the sound of Duck's snort, the wooden chain bounced against his cheek.

  "Didn't it hurt when they pierced your ear like that?" I asked.

  The habitual hint of humor left his face. "I don't know. "

  Without the humor, his face was cold and frightening. Even though I'd seen what he'd done to the grim and to five. . . no, six raiders yesterday, I'd forgotten he was dangerous. The smile had only to leave his face and I could see the hob was a predator. I hoped he never considered me prey.

  I decided it would be best to change the subject. "With those fangs," I said casually, "I'm surprised you eat oatcakes. " Yeah, I thought sarcastically, that was a good subject change.

  But it actually seemed to be one, because the hob grinned and said, "Oatcakes are good, but I do like a few hillgrims or a deer now and again. Trolls, though, are poor eating. No matter how well you clean them, they still taste like the north end of a southbound horse. "

  I laughed. This time, when his face sobered, it didn't scare me. I think it was because there was no coldness in his expression.

  "I'm sorry," he said. "Ask me what you like, but I find that I don't remember a lot of personal things. It's. . . disconcerting. Some things are as clear as yesterday, but anything I cared about might as well not have happened. I suppose that's the mountain's doing. She has only me left. "

  He didn't seem to be finished, so I waited.

  "We hobs tend to be a gregarious people," he said finally, after wiping his hands on the grass with rather more attention than such an action deserved. "I think she took my memories so I would live. "

  I thought about what I'd feel if someone took my memories from me. Took all the pain and guilt, leaving me free of it all - and marveled he still stayed near the mountain.

  "Perhaps it's just the effect of the passage of time," I offered. "It has been a very long time. "

  He nodded his head politely.

  "How is it that you survived, when no one else did?"

  "There may be more hobs, elsewhere," he said. There was a wistful tone to his voice: as much as he wanted to, he didn't believe there were any more.

  He ran his fingers up and down his staff. "I can remember a little. There was a battle with. . . something. " He looked at me out of the corner of his eye. "I think it was an army of humans. Many of us were killed, and I was hurt badly. My people took me to a cave we used when our own magic wasn't enough, a place where the mountain mends her children. I was there when the death-mages did their work. I was the only one that the mountain could save. " His nimble fingers fiddled with one of the feathers on the chain in his ear, and he abruptly changed the subject. "You said that you were attacked this morning. By what?"

  I launched into a description of the things that had come boiling out of the baker's basement, though I was thinking about his relationship with the mountain. Did it serve him or did he serve it? When I handed him the stone ax, he took it and tested it on a hair he plucked from his head. Laid on the edge, the hair split neatly in two.

  "Turned to earth, eh?" he asked thoughtfully. "How did the village celebration of the spring equinox go?"

  "Equinox?" I stumbled over the word.

  He raised an eyebrow. "The coming of spring. "

  I frowned. "We celebrate the harvest, but the spring is planting season. "

  "Ah," he said. "Do you have a winter celebration? In my day, folk - even humans - celebrated the changing seasons: spring, summer, winter, and autumn. "

  "No," I said. "At least nothing devoted specifically to the seasons. What does that have to do with anything?"

  He grunted. "It might have nothing to do with it at all - or not. Let me think on it. "

  A butterfly flew by and landed on a wildflower near the wall of the manor. I watched it for a bit, rolling his answer this way and that. He said I could ask anything. "Why are you agreeing to help us? I mean, I know that we need help - yours, someone's. You seem anxious that we know how much you can help us. Why do you need us?"

  An emotion crossed his face too fast for me to tell exactly what it was. He dug into the grass with his staff. "Because the mountain says I do. What is it that the
y do for you?"

  Startled at his question, it took me a moment to reply. "What do you mean?"

  He pursed his lips, looking at the place where his staff had dug through the grass into the dirt. "What do they do for you? The old man cares, perhaps, but it seems to me that he looks to you for aid in saving his village rather than having any true affection. The one-armed one, Kith, yes. But soon, I think, the singer will destroy him if he doesn't do it himself first. Maybe the big man with the beard cares. How long do you suppose the zealots, the ones who hate anything that hints of magic, will let you live?"

  "Spying?" I asked angrily, raising my chin.

  He said nothing.

  It was my turn to look away. What he said hurt me, but I couldn't afford to forget that they needed him. And I needed them.

  "They are my people. " I said fiercely, after only a brief pause. "I will do my best for them whether they want me to or not. " If I could make them people rather than "villagers," maybe it would help. "The baker's mother used to give me extra frosting on her sweet rolls when I was a child because once I found her lapdog. Kith's father taught me how to ride and how to track rabbits. Tevet, the woman who is the loudest to condemn me, taught me how to mend shirts so that no one would know they'd been torn. Her uncle was taken by the bloodmages. "

  "Ah," said Caefawn, "I see. "

  I stared at him, but he continued to look at the ground.

  "No doubt you do," I said shortly. I don't know why I was angry with him - or if it was him I was angry with.

  I pulled my knees up to my chest and buried my face against them, listening to the sounds of Duck ripping up grass and eating it. The hob was silent.

  The wind picked up, rattling the branches of the trees. My anger left me, and a feeling close to self-pity replaced it. Bitterness and anger I could accept, but I'd had enough self-pity for a lifetime. Time to get up and do something. "Have you been inside the manor?"

  "No. "

  I jumped to my feet. "Let me show you around, then. There's no one here to object any longer. " Moresh's steward had been one of the men who died in the fighting. No one would care if we poked around. I pulled Duck's bridle off completely and tied it to the saddle. If he wandered off, he'd only go to the inn.

  I took Caefawn to the kitchen door set in the side of the house, unobtrusively hidden behind a wall of hedge.

  "The old cook, Fenwick, used to give bits of leftover food to the village children if the lord wasn't here. The old steward didn't mind, said it kept us from raiding the gardens. We'd all come in through here. "

  The kitchen was a mess. The bread oven was tipped on its side, its door flung several paces away. Broken bits of crockery were scattered here and there amid the litter of food on the floor. A bedraggled dog scuttled out as we came in. Flies buzzed about their business, unimpressed by visitors.

  "Fenwick would be horrified," I commented, stepping over the mess as best I could. "She kept this place as if it were the king's kitchen. "

  It felt right leading him through the manor, introducing him to things I'd known all of my life: the small drawing room where the lord met with the villagers on business, the great hall where the harvest feast was served. I tried to let him see past the recent destruction, into the life of the valley before the mountain had fallen. That life had centered around the manor house. We villagers had our own lands, held in trust from the lord, and we served him and tithed to him to keep them. In return he protected us from raiders and, upon occasion, fed us in hard times.

  The upper floors had fared better than those below. I had never been above the ground floor, so I fell as silent as the hob, letting my feet take me where they would.

  The gaming room was full of tables with strange markings on them. I picked up a ball from a large table in the center of the room and sent it spinning off the edge and onto the floor. Caefawn ran his hands over the carving on the fireplace. His claws made light clicking sounds on the hard, polished surface.

  I moved to the next room. It was shrouded - covered against the lord's return, I supposed. Even with the sheets, I could tell that it was a bedroom, though it was larger than my whole cottage. I wandered among the ghostly forms, trying to decide what each was. A table. A desk. Near the far wall was an object that defeated my guessing. It stood a full head taller than I was, narrow and rounded in shape. Finally admitting defeat, I pulled the sheet free.

  A fully articulated human skeleton hung on a frame from an eye hook drilled into its skull, which stared emptily at me, jaw gaping wide. A strange thing to have in a bedroom. This must have been the bloodmage's domain.

  I wasn't bothered so much by the skeleton as by the strange double vision I had that tried to tell me it was a young man instead. Chills ran down my spine as I looked at the skull hanging some inches above me. His eyes were honey-brown, framed by hair a shade darker than my own. A small scar trailed from the side of his right eye, like a tear that had been etched in. Laugh lines lightly touched the corners of his mouth. Something drew my attention back up the edge of the scar to his eyes; but this time they seemed. . . almost yellow.

  I stepped forward, lifting my hand to touch bone or flesh and see which one was real. Before I could touch it, the skeleton glowed green and red briefly before dissolving into ashes at my feet. Dissolved by magic so strong I could smell its acrid scent in the air. Hob's magic.

  "By the mountain, lady," growled the hob from behind me, " 'twas ill-done. That poor lad had enough to bear without being summoned back as a wraith. "

  "What?" I asked. Even to my ears my voice sounded foggy. His words were plain enough, but I didn't understand the meaning. Still captured by the memory of the skeleton's eyes, I found it hard to think. "A wraith?"

  He glared at me a moment more, then frowned. His ears flared widely and he shook his head.

  "Tell me, Lady, what magic do you possess?"

  I rubbed my face briskly with my hands, but the vagueness didn't go away. He took my hands in his and spoke even more slowly. "What powers do you have, Aren?"

  "I see visions. " There, that was right.

  "Of what?"

  "Things that happen. " That didn't seem a good enough explanation, so I made another effort. Finally the fog in my head dissipated. "I used to get just feelings mostly. You know, that something bad was going to happen. Now I see mostly events that have already taken place or are happening somewhere else. But I saw the things that attacked us this morning before they did. " I shook the last of the fuzziness out of my head and smiled ruefully. "Sorry, that wasn't very coherent. I guess I'm a little dizzy. Too much excitement, too little sleep. "

  "Too much ignorance. " he said in a disgusted voice.

  I was about to ask him what he meant when the sounds of horses in the courtyard below announced the arrival of the people Merewich had chosen.

  The hob said something in another language. From the expression on his face, I didn't think it was a nice word. I let him lead the way down while I tried to figure out what had happened in that room. I knew what a wraith was, or at least I'd heard stories of them. Nasty things that sucked the marrow from the bones of people and animals unfortunate enough to encounter them. Why would a touch transform a skeleton into a wraith? Was it something the bloodmage had done? Or was it - I looked down at my hands, which certainly didn't appear any different than they had before - was it me?

  Merewich and Koret were waiting for us with the priest, Cantier, and Ice. They looked grim-faced and a little pale. It might have been this morning's battle, but I suspected it was the first sight of the hob.

  I stepped around him and bowed shallowly in an imitation of court manners. "My lord," I said to the hob, "may I introduce you to Headman Merewich, Martial Commander Koret, Elder Cantier, and Elder. . . " I paused, because I couldn't for the life of me think of Ice's real name.

  As I stared at him, he grinned suddenly. "Eannise, lord. Some folk call me Ice. "

  His g
ood humor broke the tension a bit, enabling me to finish the introductions. "Goodmen, all, may I present to you Caefawn of the Hob?"

  Merewich took over from there, as was proper. I took the horses and led them to where Duck grazed, hoping his good manners would keep them there - otherwise we'd all walk back to the village.

  By the time I returned, the elders had found seats on the stairs that led to the manor's main entrance. Caefawn sat unconcernedly on the ground below them, legs crossed in a relaxed fashion. I stopped, unwilling to intrude.

  "Can the lord's harvests feed the people you've got for the winter?" Caefawn asked as I came close enough to hear.

  "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.