Patricia Briggs (26 page)

“Yes.”

“The older one is Rook, second in command. I've been talking to him quite a bit. The raiders have been having some problems. Something's been getting into their stores. Horses are going lame for no reason. Their leader's getting a reputation for bad luck.”

I laughed. “Rook will be better?”

“He's come to see the error of their ways,” replied the hob. “It should work.”

He sounded a little tentative, but I'd come to believe in his infallibility. The hob had changed the villagers' luck. Smiling, I looked down upon my cottage from the slopes above it. We'd come up with a way to appease the earth spirit; the raiders would join us and help; Fallbrook would grow and thrive. With the luck of the hob on our side, what else could happen?

“W
HY ARE WE GOING ALL THE WAY UP HERE
?” I
ASKED
from Duck's back as we trotted up the path to the Hob. It was light out, but the rain made it less pleasant than it might have been. I yawned; I hadn't gotten much sleep after coming back from fighting the raiders. Caefawn had awakened me before the sun had risen well past the top of the mountains.

The hob looked at me as if I were an idiot. “Didn't you ask me to teach you how to keep the visions from overwhelming you?”

I considered it. “I think that was your idea.”

“Do
I
know anything about how visions work?” he asked, then continued without giving me a chance to say anything. “Of course not. No self-respecting hob would ever dream of having visions.”

I pulled off my wet hat and hit him with it lightly. “No hob would ever dream of being self-respecting,” I returned roundly as I set the hat back on my head. “If he found he was in danger of it, he'd have to do something drastic.”

He laughed. “True, lady. All too true. Well, then, I ask you, how am I to help you control your visions?”

“I thought that was what I should ask you,” I said, yawning again. “Seeing as you're so determined to teach me.”

“True, but you didn't know to ask it, did you?” He gave me a flirtatious glance before turning his attention back to where he was running.

If he was going to play with words, I could, too. “Then why are you asking me to answer it?” I ducked under a low-hanging branch.

“Because I am not a respectable hob.”

I laughed. “Enough, already. Why are we going to the Hob?”

“Because I think I know how to help you—but I need the mountain to show you.”

We took a different path up the mountain than I had ever taken. But then, I'd been on the Hob only a handful of times. The rain stopped falling, leaving behind the fresh scent of a newly washed world. The sun began warming the wetness from my rough wool cloak.

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 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 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.