The Hob's Bargain

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 listened. 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 pi

"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.