Patricia Briggs (31 page)

“Ah, Kith,” Fennigyr said, “you were my best, my favorite. Did you know? I always liked the men with a little less bulk and more speed. I had to talk Moresh into using you at all—he liked them with more bulge and height. I asked him, Who'd you have an easier time hearing in the woods, a moose or a ferret?”

The force of Kith's stare drew her attention away from the cedar staff.

“In this light you almost glow, Firehair,” continued the mage. “I always like my works of art to be pretty as well as functional, and I've always been partial to red.”

Kith's eyes were still holding mine. If I hadn't known him so well, I wouldn't have seen his mouth tense when the mage called him Firehair. I wouldn't have
seen
the power that name had over him. It bound him to the mage. I could see the tie, spirit to spirit.

I remembered what Caefawn had told me about names. Kith had a name, given him by earth, air, fire, water, and magic. Given to him by the bloodmage—who was evidently a man of little imagination.
Firehair? My poor Kith
.

I could feel the part of me constrained by the mage's spell. It itched like an infected tooth, and I pushed against it.

“I'm not Moresh,” the mage said. “He didn't know how much of myself I put in each of you.”

He spoke like an artisan—didn't the saddlemaker say that very thing so often it had become a running joke in the village? I paused in my thoughts—hadn't I given part of myself to the creatures I'd commanded? Perhaps Fennigyr meant it literally.

I focused on Kith, trying to see him as I'd seen Wandel while he'd practiced, as I'd seen Kith's ties to the bloodmage a moment ago.

Kith broke into the bloodmage's speech. “What did you do to the girl?”

“She's not your concern,” purred the mage. “One of the things I liked best about you was that you were never quite tamed. Moresh thought it was a weakness. He feared you, did you know? What he couldn't see was that the difference made you better than the others. You're older than any of my other men.” The mage stared sadly at the sky. “Such hard work to make, and so easily destroyed. He didn't see you were more than just a man without a shield arm. I could kill you….”

She
looked at the sky, too, but all we saw was clouds. I needed to see Kith. Or my staff. If I could have spoken, I'd have sworn. I swore to myself anyway, though I continued to struggle with the spell and my fear.

A harsh grunt returned her flittering attention to Kith. He was on his knees, and I could see the veins in his forehead. I could
see
how the mage used his bonds to cause pain.

“…how easy it would be?” asked the mage. He hurt Kith some more.

Kith's fair skin had turned dark red.

I fought; the itch turned to an ache—how strange without a body, and at that moment it turned to outright pain as something tore. I would have screamed if I could. I'd done more damage, but I'd also damaged Fennigyr's control.

I'd freed my magic, too, what little there was of it.

Firehair
, I thought. Holding Kith's real name to me, I
looked
at him. With his name, my spiritsight was much clearer than it had been with the harper. Like Wandel's, Kith's spirit was full of light. If ghosts were a candle, then living spirits were a glass, magnifying the light of the soul. I could see the little bits of foreign spirit tied into his own, and I plucked at them. But when I pulled one away, I had to replace it, because I
saw
I'd damaged Kith. Without those little bits, Kith's spirit would be wounded beyond healing. So I attacked the spirit bond that tied him to Fennigyr instead. It fell apart like a poorly knitted sock, leaving Kith's spirit damaged, but free.

“What?” exclaimed the bloodmage, staring at Kith.

Kith gasped a deep breath of air, unaware that it was not the mage who had released him. The mage was not so handicapped. Kith didn't have time to look up before the mage's swiftly drawn sword slid into his back and out his belly.

She
turned her face away from Kith's death as wild grief sliced through me. Her gaze passed by the other berserker, and I could see the pain on his face. The lowlander had loved Kith, too.

Failure and agony almost distracted me enough that I didn't see what lurked behind the berserker, but no one could miss the solid thwack as Caefawn's staff hit the berserker in the head.

Caefawn's cloak was gone, and his remaining clothes were in rags. His charcoal gray coloring was somehow more foreign, exposed so openly. The neat silver-black braid of hair was loosed, spilling in a wild curtain about him. His right knee was bandaged heavily, and his ears, pinned tightly against his head, were free of ornamentation.

“Bloodmage,” growled Caefawn, sounding something more than human.

Hope flared inside me for a moment, but I'd lost my belief in the hob's omnipotence sometime since the day I'd ridden up to fetch him from his mountain. The hob did not have the power to take on the bloodmage, not on this side of the river. I could feel the bindings that held him to the mountain and drained his strength. For the first time I understood that not only did the mountain augment his power, but he also fed her.

I would get to watch him die while I wondered if I could have fought the bloodmage better if I hadn't weakened myself by taking the spirits for their power.

“So you're the thing that's got my berserkers chasing their tails,” observed the mage, sounding fascinated. I could hear nothing in his voice that suggested killing Kith had bothered him, though he'd sounded like a love-struck boy just moments before. “What are you?”

The hob snarled like a cornered lynx, beautiful and inhuman. His red eyes glowed even in the full light of day. “I am Death,” he hissed.

“No,” breathed the bloodmage. “I am.”

Something dark left his hand, something vile that made my spirit flinch and step back. It hit Caefawn and spread down his chest. But as if it couldn't adhere to his skin, it dripped off him to puddle on the ground. The dirt beneath the hob's feet melted and steamed beneath the force of Fennigyr's magic.

Caefawn sprang onto the mage but hit some invisible barrier a foot away from Fennigyr's body. It propelled the hob backward a bodylength, and when the hob came to his feet he was clearly favoring his bandaged knee.

“I am your death.” There was mock sorrow in the mage's voice.

Frenzied by the hob's danger, I
pushed
the edges of the broken place inside my head where the mage's spell was slowly unraveling.

Fennigyr waved his hand gently and the hob staggered back. The mage laughed and displayed the earring he held. “Yours, I believe?” He closed his hand on it. “It is enough to make you mine. I have just been forced to kill one of my children—was it you who set him free? But you will make an admirable replacement. Whatever you are, you have magic to feed me with.”

The hob was frozen where he stood. I could see the sweat gathering on his forehead as he fought the mage's hold. But it was no use. If he could have forced the battle into a physical contest, Caefawn would have won, but magic for magic, the mage was an easy victor. I didn't think the bloodmage could tamper with the ties binding the hob to the mountain because they were part of the hob, not an addition like the berserkers' ties to Fennigyr. But I never doubted the bloodmage could kill Caefawn.

I was so tired, and my head hurt and itched in places I couldn't scratch. I rubbed my temples, trying to get some relief.

I
rubbed my temples.

I'd broken through the spell at last, at least part of it. I had a moment to savor it, then the spell unwound. The shock of it left me lying on the cobbles, but my body was my own again.

A groan from Caefawn caught my attention. Neither he nor Fennigyr appeared to have noticed my momentary fit. Caefawn's face was drawn back in a grimace of pain and effort.

Neklavar
, I thought, giving Caefawn the name he'd told me while I dreamed. True dreams they'd been, for my vision cleared and I could see far deeper into Caefawn's spirit than I had before—as it had when I'd used Kith's real name.

Thick cords of green and gold reached from his soul through his spirit into the ground, his ties to the mountain. With spiritsight, I could see the bindings that the bloodmage was trying to put on him. They looped the hob loosely, but slid off without attaching.

The bloodmage didn't have the hob's real name.

Fennigyr, my father had called him when the mage came to collect my brother's body and raged over its uselessness. The lowland berserker had called him Fennigyr as well. But this spring, on the top of Hob's Mountain, Kith had called him Nahag.

It might have been a nickname.

I focused on the bloodmage, whose face was smooth and blank, though his body shook with the effort of the magic he was using. I tried to say his name, but my throat wouldn't work right—I just couldn't form the word. So I thought it instead.

Nahag
.

It wasn't just a nickname.

I could
see
the reason bloodmages all went insane. Rather than looking like a brighter version of a ghost, Nahag's spirit was like a beggar's cloak, rags and tatters covered here and there by different colored fabrics, pieces of other people's spirit. I thought of the little bits I'd taken from the noeglins and the bits of myself I'd had to give in return, and was sickened.

When I'd looked at Kith or Caefawn with his real name held tightly to me, I'd seen his soul, a rich, warm form enveloped in body and spirit. But the bloodmage's soul was small and dark, turned upon itself as if it could not bear to touch his corrupted spirit.

One of the foreign bits belonged to Kith. I ripped it away: fury spurred my path without giving me a chance to wonder if I could do such a thing or how I could do it. As soon as it lost contact with Nahag, it disappeared from my
sight
.

The other ragged bits fluttered and whined, disturbed by something. It was probably my imagination, but I thought they were trying to attract my attention to their unnatural plight.

With no better plan, I decided to see what would happen if I took them away from Nahag, hoping the power he'd gained from the people he'd stolen from would abandon him.

Like plucking geese, it was a job that soon grew wearying. I stopped now and then to look, but the mage was concentrating on the hob. I couldn't tell if I was doing any good or not.

My head ached with effort, and something else was wrong, too. I'd damaged myself breaking Nahag's spell, but I didn't have time to worry about it. As my father said,
“You have to finish what you start, Aren. Or all your work's for naught.”

I curled my hands around the cedar and fought off the vision so I could continue to work.

I had to rest, and took the moment to see how Caefawn was faring. His skin had lightened to a pale gray and sweat matted his hair, but otherwise he appeared unhurt.

I looked beyond him and saw a circle of villagers ringing the three of us. They'd come, drawn here by Duck's riderless state, or perhaps by Kith's abrupt leave-taking. But they stayed well away from the silent, motionless battle in the center of the street. There was grim fear on most of their faces. I wondered if they feared the hob or the bloodmage, and decided it was probably both. However, one person had joined the fight.

Rook approached the bloodmage cautiously. With a well-worn knife, he probed the magic that had kept the hob from hitting Nahag. Nahag made a brushing gesture and Rook was tossed to the cobbles. He lay there for a few counts, rolled to his feet, and tried again.

“Enough,” whispered Nahag to the determined raider.

“I won't let you kill him,” said Rook. There was a fierce determination in his pose. I wondered if Caefawn had teased the bleakness from Rook's soul as well as he'd done it for me.

“You can stop nothing.” Nahag's voice was tight with impatience. He spoke a few words and gestured—I recognized it as the same spell he'd thrown at me, and waited for Rook to react. Nothing happened; there was too little magic behind the spell.

Rook looked almost as surprised as the mage. I'd given up hope, because my efforts hadn't seemed to do anything; but hope flared back again.

Wary, but not yet overly alarmed, Nahag surveyed the villagers, dismissing them one by one and skipping over me to return to Caefawn.

“Is it you? What have you done?” Nahag jerked his sword out of Kith and began a strike toward Caefawn.

I grabbed as many of the captive spirits as I could and tore them free. The sword dropped to the ground, and the mage fell to his hands and knees with a guttural cry. Forcing my stubborn body to move, I walked forward. When I reached Nahag, I collapsed to the ground.

He was trying to hold together the gaps in his spirit with magic, but his power was a thin and pale thing now. He didn't seem to know how to reach the magic of the land, the magic I used. I saw his gaze focus on the lowland berserker, and Nahag began to crawl toward him.