by Dave Duncan
"Your hob, though, or imp as we call them, is not bound as a demon is. It has free will, and undoubtedly it is responsible for your visions. Those are very unusual and very dangerous. Think of them not as prophecies but as warnings. No hob nor spirit can foretell the future, not in any detail. A great tutelary may recognize a sickness in a man and know that he will die soon. It may have knowledge beyond mortals' ken and be privy to great secrets, but it cannot write a history of the future. The hob knows less of what is going to happen to you than you do, because it lives only for the moment."
The pause seemed to invite comment, so Toby said, "Yes, Brother." Whatever this long introduction was leading up to must obviously be bad news.
"You, for example, are deeply concerned by the problem of finding enough food for us, but that is completely beyond its comprehension. Mostly the hob just watches the world unfolding around you, satisfying its childish curiosity. If it becomes excited, then it may do foolish things, but otherwise it is only an observer, I think. You agree?"
"Yes, Brother."
"It takes no heed for the morrow, until suddenly it realizes you are in serious trouble. Then it will react to save you, because you are valuable to it. It is undoubtedly fond of you in its way, and if it cannot understand what pain is, that is not its fault. Suffering it ignores, but your death matters to it. If it can use its powers to save your life, then it will. But supposing it cannot?"
"When it is blocked by other demons?" Toby had promised not to ask questions, but the friar either did not notice that lapse or did not care.
"Baron Oreste's demons, perchance. And the Inquisition undoubtedly uses demons of its own, although the brothers probably do not think of them as that. Once in a while they must pick on a genuine creature, and if they did not restrain it by some sort of gramarye it would blast them. When they disincarnate an incarnate it would merely take over one of their own number unless they had some means of preventing that."
"By 'disincarnate' you mean —"
"I mean kill its host, Tobias. When the husk dies, or soon after, the demon is freed. Suppose ... Let us suppose that a few days from now you meet the Inquisition. They may be looking out for you, or someone in our party denounces you, or they just pick on a foreigner. It doesn't matter which, although that poster you mentioned suggests that they are specifically looking for you. Also, the Inquisition is normally extremely patient, absurdly so. It will keep people in jail for years while it prepares its case. For it to put you to the Question so quickly is very unusual. But you say they will begin to torture you almost right away."
"And I cannot tell them what they want to know."
"Of course. And so, eventually, you will die. Even a strong man can only endure so much. Then, and only then, the hob realizes the problem."
"Then? Not until then?"
"Probably not until you are dead or near death. It realizes its mistake, but it cannot just heal you and blow a hole through your cell walls, because it is blocked by some sort of gramarye. So what does it do?"
Toby blinked in sudden sunshine as they emerged from the shade of the trees. "I don't know, Brother."
"I suspect it does what we want to do when we make a mistake. You know that terrible feeling when you have done something wrong and wish you could undo it? A thoughtless word, an error of judgment, hitting your thumb with a hammer? For us, what's done is done, but that may not be true for the hob. Suppose it jumps back in time—taking you with it, of course—and lets the world unfold again? The next time events may turn out differently."
"Spirits! I did not know that was possible!"
"I find it hard to credit myself, but I heard such a procedure mentioned as a theory once, many, many years ago. I shall discuss it with Father Guillem, if you will let me take him into our confidence. But see how well it fits the facts! Especially it fits the hob. An elemental has no need to violate the order of nature so brutally. A tutelary never would, because to change the past for one person would change it for many and might introduce other evils worse than the first. A demon cannot, because it is bound by conjuration. I have only scant knowledge of such vile hexing, but I do believe that it binds the demon in time as well as in space. The hob, though, is free to do as it likes. I expect it tried this trick once in desperation and it worked, so now it does it more often."
Usually Toby thought of himself as a horse and the hob as the rider. Brother Bernat was saying that this rider gave the horse its head—which might not be true always but could be most of the time—but when the horse wandered into trouble, the rider took it back to ... "I find this hard to visualize, Brother."
"So do I, my son, so do I! Imagine that you are dying from the inquisitors' cruelty, say a month or two from now. The hob wakes up to the situation and flips you back to this morning. If it does this properly, then everything that has happened is wiped out. The slate is clean. You proceed more or less as you did before."
"Then I should fall into the same trap again."
The narrow gray shoulders shrugged. "Not necessarily. Life is a series of choices, of chance happenings, of little events producing large results. Small hooks catch big fish. A seed blows in the wind and a tree grows. Things may not work out exactly as they did the first time."
"The ghoul in the orange grove! The first time I tripped over Hamish and ... " Toby rephrased a question into a statement. "You think I died, that the creature killed me!"
"It would seem so. The hob would not die unless the sword went through your heart. It mourns its friend Tobias. It finds its house growing cold, if you will forgive a cruel expression. It jumps him back a few days and lets him try again."
"But—"
"But why do you come back damaged so often? Why do you remember anything at all of the lost days?" The friar smiled his little smile. "Those are good questions, my son, so I shall ask them for you. Alas, I don't have good answers, but I suspect that the hob is going crazy. It is an immortal trying to cope with mortality.
"For us what's done is done. For the hob, what's done can be tried again. It certainly seems logical that neither it nor you should retain any memory of what hasn't happened yet and may never happen." He sighed. "This could give a man a headache. Do you understand this, Pepita?"
"No, Brother," said the child solemnly.
"Well, you are not alone."
"Déjá vu!" Toby said. "That feeling that you've been here before!"
Brother Bernat beamed. "You often have that feeling?"
"Quite often. I remember it very strongly in Brittany once and a couple of times in Navarre. And at other places, less marked."
"So! So perhaps the hob has been at this for years and you did not know. But now ... Now, perhaps, it is going mad, so its powers are not working properly. Or other demons are interfering with it, somewhere in your future. Either way, you are coming back damaged and remembering some of what happened. Not all of it, I'm sure. You just retain fragments, of course."
Here was the bad news. "You mean I could have been—I mean I will remain—longer in the hands of the Inquisition?"
"And in the baron's clutches, too. I don't think you recall the end of the story in any of those cases."
They walked on for a while in silence. At last Toby put it into words. "And when you said these happenings were dangerous, what you meant was that one day the hob may mess things up completely. Is that possible? Could it tie the two of us into a circle, a never-ending loop in time?"
"I am certainly concerned about that possibility."
And so was Toby Longdirk. There could be no worse fate in the universe than being tortured by the Inquisition throughout all eternity.
"The dangers facing you are uncountable, my son. The Inquisition is the most immediate, of course. I shall be most surprised if your vision turns out to be false and the inquisitors are not watching for you at Tortosa. Assuming you can pass them safely and survive all the other perils of this road as well, then Baron Oreste waits in Barcelona. If he tries to strip the hob from you, he will alm
ost certainly take parts of your mind with it. If he doesn't, then in time the hob will inevitably go completely insane, which means you will. If you were not the man you are, that would have happened long since. Tobias, I do not envy you your future!"
"There they are!" Pepita said, pointing a straw-thin finger. The pilgrims were in sight in the distance, going slowly across a wide pasture.
"So they are," said Brother Bernat, "and we have not yet finished our business." He turned aside from the track and strode over to a thicket where many of the trees still bore bright green leaves. There, as if he had planned it, he went straight to a mossy stump in the leafy gloom and seated himself like a king on a throne. The air was cool and deliciously fragrant. "Oleanders," he explained, waving a slender hand at the foliage.
Pepita promptly discovered a trail of ants and dropped on all fours to study it. Toby sank down cross-legged on the ground before the old man, resting his throbbing arms on his knees. For a moment neither spoke.
The friar glanced at the child, who had now tracked the ants to their nest at the base of a tree and was lying there with her nose almost inside it.
"Tobias," he said softly, "you can tell me the rest now."
"Father, I told you everything!" Pause. "Everything I believed was relevant." But not Mezquiriz! He had not mentioned Mezquiriz. Must he bare even that secret sorrow? He had never told anyone. Even Hamish did not know the awful truth.
"There is more, Tobias, unless I am sadly misinformed about the human race. You are a man of considerable will, but do you tell me you have never once succumbed to the temptations of the flesh? I have watched the effect you have on our companions. You draw women's eyes like flies to honey."
"That is the hob's doing! Yes, I did let it learn about ... about what men and women do, Brother. It wants to experience that again, and it lures women to me."
The old man laughed. "Does it? I think you underestimate yourself. But tell me what happened. I shall not condemn you for being human."
Toby bent his head so he need not see that gaunt old face with its knowing smile. He clenched his fists until his bruised wrists throbbed. "Just once, Brother. Only once! I did not know what would happen." He waited to hear the forgiveness he wanted, but nothing came. "It was at Mezquiriz, a tiny place in Navarre, near Roncevalles. It was not a casual thing, Brother. We could not dream of marriage, but we were very much in love, both of us."
"Knowing you, I am sure you were. You would not deceive a girl for momentary pleasure. You did not know, but did you not suspect?"
Toby looked up angrily. "How could I?" The penetrating dark eyes seared him. He looked away quickly.
Yes, he must have suspected, even then, for he had fled from similar situations in the past. His doubts had been more than the normal anxiety of a young man about to embark on his first lovemaking. He remembered the words spoken outside the cottage, when the ice-bound night was a soaring choir of stars and snow glimmered on the peaks. He remembered Jeanne in his arms, her sweet fragrance, the taste of her kisses on his mouth. He remembered his terrified excuses: I am nothing but a hunted fugitive, a deserter. I have no land, no friends with influence, no money.
Her whispered reply: Life is short and love is shorter. If you care for me, do not deprive me of the happiness I ask.
I love you too much to love you.
If I knew you were leaving forever at dawn, I should still want this.
"We were members of a band of smugglers, Brother. Hamish and I needed to escape from Nevil's domains, and that was the only way. We joined them. Jeanne was one of them. I loved her. By all the spirits, I loved her!"
He stared at the dead leaves under the old man's feet. Tears ran into his stubble, but he did not wipe them away. "One night we ... we exchanged solemn promises of love. And then ... we went to her room."
Even as they lay together on the tiny bed with starlight peeking through cracks in the shutter, even in the frantic, clumsy fumbling with each other's garments—even then he had tried to talk her out of it. She had kissed his words away. And now he could not find words. He sat in silence with the tears flowing.
"She died, my son?"
Yes! Yes! Will you make me say it? He nodded, not looking up. "Not only her, Brother. Houses collapsed or burst into flames. Hamish barely escaped. They thought it was an artillery barrage."
Brother Bernat sighed. "It does not surprise me. Passion such as that would have been far beyond the hob's imagining. So you have avoided women ever since?"
Now Toby did look up, glaring furiously. "What do you think I am?"
The friar smiled as if he accepted the rebuke. "A most unfortunate young man who deserves better of life than the curse he bears. But answer my question. Look me in the eyes and tell me the truth."
"I have never as much as kissed another woman. Not even when they ask me outright!"
"Good!" the friar said. "Then there is hope that I may be able to help you." He looked around to see where Pepita had gone, but she was out of earshot, stalking a squirrel. "And even if you did suspect that there might be trouble that night in Mezquiriz, no one could condemn you for what happened. You carry more remorse than you need. Tobias, I am truly sorry, believe me. I can teach you how to tame the hob, within limits. I can show you how to make it behave itself, so you will not go crazy and it will not thrash around damaging other people as it has done in the past. Do you want this?"
"Very much, Brother. More, I think, than anything in the world."
"There is a price to pay, though. Two prices. One is that you will no longer be able to count on the hob to defend you. Basically, I will show you how to lull it to sleep, and a sleeping watchdog does not bark."
"I would rather die than go crazy. If I do go crazy, then I will run wild like a demon, won't I? Killing, destroying?"
Brother Bernat nodded. "It is probable. The other price is that I cannot give you back what you lost that night in Mezquiriz. I know of no way to make the hob proof against ecstasy. You will remain condemned to a life of celibacy."
Toby rubbed his eyes with a knuckle. He realized that he felt bitter, which was absurd, for none of his troubles were the old friar's fault. "I am twenty-one. How old will I be when that stops worrying me?"
"About a hundred."
"I see." No, the smile was not mockery, it was sympathy. He returned it as well as he could. "Half a life is better than none. I shall be very grateful for whatever assistance you can give me, Brother. It is wonderful news that you can help me at all!" It was also very surprising. Where did such a technique come from? What was it used for? He had promised not to ask questions.
Brother Bernat studied him solemnly for a moment. "It will not be easy. You are old to start learning. Fortunately, you are a very brave young man. Nerves like granite, I said, didn't I? All you have to do is slow down your heartbeat."
Toby stared at him blankly until the old man chuckled.
"Pepita can do it! Shall I call her over to demonstrate?"
"Why should Pepita ... ?" Now he knew why he was not to ask questions. Brother Bernat himself must know the same trick and for the same reason, whatever that might be. "No, Brother, I believe you."
"The slower the beat, the quieter the hob, like a hibernating hedgehog. It lives in your heart, remember, so when you get excited and the house gets noisy, then the hob is alarmed. You probably have a naturally slow beat, which has helped preserve you from it. The secret is calmness, serenity of mind, and you do not lose your head. Most people would have been howling maniacs this morning after what you had been through, but you recovered almost immediately."
"I am flattered that you thought so," Toby said grimly. Somewhere deep inside he was still screaming. How many days until he was back on the rope? How many nights until he could sleep without dreaming of it?
The friar's fond little smile returned. "You underestimate yourself, Tobias. It is part of your charm, if you will forgive me for insulting a virile young man by telling him he has charm. You do, though.
It is emotion in you that speeds your heart and rouses the hob." He waited as if inviting comment.
"Suppose I want to run, or work hard?"
"Exercise does not matter, only emotion. I don't know why."
"Gunfire rouses it, Brother. Or thunder. Or loud music."
"Do they? Those things might annoy an elemental, but your hob should be used to them by now. Are you sure it is not you who is alarmed? If you are frightened that the hob may be frightened, then it may be your fear that rouses it. Fear, anger—those you will have to learn to control even better than you control them now, which is much better than most men do. You understand now why the passions of love must be avoided. I shall teach you the methods and leave you to practice them. You will have to devote every spare minute to it."
"Will this get me past the Inquisition?"
Brother Bernat shook his head. "I think the poster will be their real reason for detaining you. Even if I am wrong, they will detect the hob in you. Pepita did. I confess that I did, also. You may never be skilled enough to hide it completely, and you certainly cannot hope to learn the knack in a couple of days. To become even reasonably proficient will take you months."
"Then I had better begin, just in case I live that long."
"Very well. First, you must learn how to breathe. Can you breathe without moving your shoulders, only your abdomen?"
Apparently he was serious.
"I have been doing so all morning! Like this?"
"It would help if you were to remove your upper garments again," Brother Bernat said apologetically. "I shall perform another healing on you after this, which should remove the rest of your pain. You are still in pain?"
"A little," Toby admitted, easing out of his jerkin.
"More than a little, I suspect." The friar waited until the shirt came off. "Stand. Now show me. Here." He poked a finger at Toby's solar plexus. "Out. In. Out. In. Good. Now, can you do the reverse—breathe in just using the upper part of your chest?"
At the moment that hurt, of course, but it would have been difficult at any time.
"Very good! Now, start a very long breath, very slowly, beginning down here at the base of your lungs and filling them all the way to the top. Good. Hold that. Now let it out from the top down... . " He chuckled as he watched Toby's contortions. "Wait a moment. Now do it again. Good! Very good indeed! Let me give you the timing. Too fast and you will make yourself giddy."