The Hob's Bargain

Duck enjoyed the sun, snorting and curveting as no responsible farm horse ever would. The hob was certainly having an effect on my horse—on me, too, for that matter. By all rights I should have been fretting and stewing about how we were going to appease the earth spirit and keep the villagers from assassinating me on sight, or I should have been examining my possibly upcoming nuptials and chewing my nails. Instead, I was chasing after the hob and enjoying it. His boundless energy and enthusiasm, coupled with the warm sun, made worry impossible.

The path we took wasn't well suited for a horse. Duck and I jumped over several piles of trees, and slipped and slid around a boulder too big to jump. The faint trail we followed didn't climb up the mountain, but meandered here and there around her sides.

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 i

"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 ca

"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 gri

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.