Patricia Briggs (24 page)

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.

W
HEN
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.

S
O
I
DIDN'T TELL
K
ORET 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 was 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.”

We sat for a while. His tail snuck around my waist. I pried it off and set it politely between us with a pat. I hadn't realized just how strong his tail was. If he hadn't let me, I'd never have gotten it off.

“Is the rock uncomfortable?”

I quit twitching my hips. “Quite. So how do I call a hooglin?”

“Noeglin,” he corrected. “Hmm, this might be a problem. I'll try to describe it, and we'll see what happens. Think of a creature formed from the stench of the swamp. They aren't too intelligent, nor yet too—” He broke off abruptly and pointed.

In the dark, only its movement allowed me to see the creature scuffling about the edges of the swamp. It had a dark, furry pelt and looked almost bearlike, but was much smaller. It might have been the size of a herd dog.

“Pikka,” said the hob when it was gone. “They're a true animal, but I'd be careful just the same. They've a nasty temper—I'd rather face a bear than a pikka. Most times a bear will leave you alone.”

“They use magic?” I asked. Otherwise, why would they come back after the bonds were lifted? I'd certainly never heard of a pikka before.

The hob nodded. “For stealth, mostly. A pikka can slip into a herd of sheep and eat a lamb lying beside its mother without disturbing any of the sheep.”

“Caefawn,” I asked, “where are they all coming from—the fairies and such? Spirits are immortal, and I know how you survived—but what about the pikka and earthens?”

“The guardian spirits like the earth spirit, mostly, I suspect.” His tail slipped off the rock, almost as if it were accidental. I gave it a suspicious look. His eyes crinkled, but he kept his mouth seriously straight as he continued. “I suppose a few of them were here anyway, just hiding. The only time you'll ever find a dwarf is when he wants you to. The earthens are a manifestation of the earth spirit—not really creatures in their own right. Most of the things the village has been seeing lately are under the earth spirit's guardianship. Except, of course, the winkies that tangled the nets and made Cantier so angry. They belong to the river guardian.”

“The mountain had only you?”

“Of my kind,” he replied.

There was something in his voice.
Pain
, I thought,
or at least sorrow
, so I changed the subject. “Hooglins are formed from the stink of the swamp….”

The hob settled more comfortably on the rock. “Noeglins are mischievous. One of their favorite tricks is to creep up behind some poor unsuspecting traveler and scare the bejeebers out of him.”

“Like a hob-of-the-bog?” I suggested.

He cleared his throat, so straight-faced I worried he was offended until he spoke. “Well, hobs don't generally eat their victims…unless they're hillgrims. Hillgrims taste really good raw, but they're best when cooked for a day in a pot with onions and butter.” His tail now rested on the rock again, this time on my right (the hob sat on my left).

“How can they eat if they don't have a body?” I looked at his tail suspiciously, but it lay virtuously still.

“Very few creatures are pure spirit,” he said seriously. “Ghosts are, and poltergeists. But all things are tied more strongly to either body, soul, or spirit. The ones you can call are tied strongest to the spirit. Sometimes, like the noeglins or the earth guardian, they can put off and on the physical body as easily as I shed my cloak.”

“So you call them spirits, even though they have a body?”

“And a soul, most of them.” He nodded. “There are three types of living creatures: mortals like humans and dwarves, soulfuls like hobs and cats, and spirits like the guardians and noeglins.”

“Cats?” I said.

A flurry of sticks flew at us out of a growth of bog-weed. They hurt when they hit—and most of them hit. Caefawn snarled, startling me, for he sounded like a wolf and I'd been thinking of him as though he were human, despite his talk of eating hillgrims. Overlaying the smell of the bog was a acrid smell. After a moment I couldn't smell anything else.

“Right,” the hob said after the deluge was finished. “There's a noeglin. You need to keep him from hurting you and get him out into the open.”

“Come here, you nasty noeglin,” I coaxed. A speaker's voice seemed to have some power with the earth spirit and the ghosts. Maybe it would work with a noeglin.

“Here I be,” said a soft, sibilant, hate-filled hiss. Then, like the ghost, it attacked my mind.

It was easier to fight than the ghost had been, though the noeglin didn't attack in precisely the same way. I tried to block his advance into my head. It seemed to work best when I envisioned something solid.

So I held a mental door before the noeglin, a stout barn door that stopped it where it was. Before it could try something else, I put doors all around it, trapping it there, though I could see it hanging over the swamp like a misty clump of rotting weeds.

I don't know what part of it I held trapped, no more than I could have said what part of the ghost I'd caught. These were creatures of spirit, not body—so I thought I'd ask the self-appointed expert.

“How can I hold it in my mind and yet it is still there?” I asked, pointing at the noeglin.

“Bloodmages take a bit of an enemy's hair or skin and attach it to a vole or mouse by magic,” said the hob soberly. “When they kill the mouse, they can kill their enemy, too. Sympathetic magic. You can hold a small bit of it in your mind and affect the whole of it.”

The noeglin wriggled suddenly, spouting a series of sounds that boomed and hurt my ears. “Me go,” it said.

“It wants you to let it go,” translated the hob unnecessarily.

I opened one of the doors, releasing the noeglin from my control. The spirit sank tiredly into the dark mud of the swamp, taking the noxious odor with it.

“How is it that it—and you—speak the same language I do?” I asked, when the noeglin was gone.

“'Tis a gift of the hobs to speak whatever tongue they hear, a gift the guardian spirits share when they will,” he said. “As for the other—another human wouldn't have understood the noeglin. But you are a speaker, and what good would your gift be if you couldn't understand the spirits you call? Now about the will-o'-wisps—”

S
PEAKING TO THE SPIRITS, ONCE
I
KNEW
I
COULD DO IT
, was easier than the visions. Calling them was simply a matter of knowing what they were. Caefawn had started with ghosts because they were relatively powerless, and I already knew what they were. He seemed to think it was his duty to stuff my head full of every kind of spirit I was likely to meet. He made me memorize the names and characteristics of any number of them. Most of the creatures, he said, he'd never seen.

Spirits had no body in their natural state—which is what made them spirits, I suppose. Ghosts, ghasts, noeglins, and poltergeists were lesser spirits who were often hostile. He hadn't found any ghasts here, but I met most of the rest of the very weak and horrid. Poltergeists, he said, were both powerless and mindless—not worth the effort of approaching them.

The weaker benevolent spirits like dryads and naiads he'd shown me as well. The dryad had been soft-spoken and solid-seeming; he reminded me of the ancient oak he called home. The naiad had been shy, leaving as quickly as she'd responded. Caefawn hadn't seen her, though he'd been sitting beside me the whole time.