Patricia Briggs

by The Hob's Bargain

  Beneath the red blanket, gold magic called to me, singing tenderly in my soul. Something snapped, and one thread of red came unbound. Then another.

  Layer by layer the bands of red were being torn away, and the power of it lifted me off the ground. I hovered a fingerspan off the earth as one by one the angry red cords gave way. When the crimson ties broke, I could feel the corrupted touch of bloodmagic pull in places I’d never felt before—like a hair caught deep in my throat. It didn’t hurt, but I could feel it all the same. The blood cords pulled me by their ties to the land of my birth, until I saw…

  …a tower, dark with the force of the mage within. He called the magic tied to the land. I felt the strength of him like the heat of the smithy forge. Madness lurked in the heart of his call, adding its strength to his purpose.

  Then the vision was gone. With it went the last of the binding spells of the bloodmages. I felt them go—as any mageborn native to this land would have. For a moment the floor glowed brilliantly gold, then the light traveled up the walls as if driven by demons, fading, leaving me sitting, exalted, on the ground, alone in the dark cellar.

  My eyes told me the magic was gone, but where I touched the ground, my body still tingled with its sweet warmth. I felt clean, though I’d never known I was dirty. I put my fingers against the dirt of the cellar floor and knew the bloodmage’s hold on the magic of the land was gone.

  A loud shout drew my attention to the raiders above me: I’d forgotten about them. Without the protection of the magic, fear returned apace. For a moment, I thought they’d seen the light as well, and waited for them to storm the cellar to investigate.

  My heart pounded, my breath came in quick pants, but they were only fighting over some piece of loot. Gram’s silver mirror, probably.

  Let them fight about it. Let them just go. The longer they were here, the better the chance they would find me. They’d been here for a long time now: they should be getting nervous. The men might be coming down from the field.

  An immense pot in the cellar fell to the floor with a crash. The sound quieted the men who stood above.

  “There’s something below us—look for a door outside. These kinds of places usually have a cellar. There could be valuables in it.”

  I jumped to my feet and ran to the far side of the cellar. It was dark, but the dirt floor was clear of things that could catch my feet. There was a violent boom from above. They’d knocked over the big shelves near the fireplace.

  Without actually seeing it fall, I caught the big soap-making cauldron as it slipped from the peg Daryn had worried was too small for it. I’d have to remember to tell him he had been right. Men liked that—at least Ma said they did. The weight of the cauldron made me stagger, and the handle flipped down and bruised my thumb where it rested over the edge of the pot—but I managed to hold it and my knife without making any noise.

  I set the cauldron carefully on the ground. As long as nothing else fell, I was safer now. The shelves had fallen across the trapdoor. There was nothing the raiders could do to the house that we couldn’t repair. Nothing they could take we couldn’t live without.

  I could safely marvel at my vision of the pot falling. I’d never had one so clear, never had one I could use to prevent a disaster. It must be because of the unbinding.

  I would tell Daryn about the sight tonight, I decided. Not to punish myself, but because I could tell him how it had saved me. If magic was unbound again, maybe I could use my bit of magic to help us, help the village—as Gram had done. I was still smiling when yet another vision took me.

  Daryn held the horses in place while Father helped Daryn’s younger brother, Caulem, attach the harness to the plow Lord Moresh had given the village two years ago. Father was patient, letting Caulem fumble with the unfamiliar double harness. Beresford had only the older style, single-horse plows.

  Something caught Daryn’s attention, and he held his hand to shade his eyes as he stared into the rising sun. His body tightened to alertness, and he said something urgently to my father.

  Father dropped the leather strap into the dirt and stepped forward to Daryn’s side.

  After no more than a look, Father grabbed Caulem’s shoulders and shouted something at him, throwing the boy onto the horse that hadn’t yet been hitched to the plow. He shoved the reins into the boy’s hands. Caulem shouted something back, protest written in the stiffness of his jaw. Father took his hat and slapped the horse, sending it running down the path to my parents’ house.

  The track was wide and the horse knew every rock and rut, sprinting full-out for home. The bandit waiting in the tree at the edge of the field had a finger missing from one hand, but it didn’t affect the flight of the arrow that took Caulem in the throat.

  The man leaped from the tree and tried to catch the horse, but it had been thoroughly spooked by the run and the scent of blood. It was a working horse, strong enough to pull the raider dangling by its reins as if he weighed no more than a twist of straw. The man held on until he lost his footing and the horse’s iron-shod hoof caught him in the leg, throwing him to the ground.

  Unhindered, the animal raced on. The message that the bandits had come covered its back in a red blanket of Caulem’s blood.

  The vision shifted abruptly.

  My father was facedown in the dirt, an ax buried in his back. Daryn stood over him, work-hardened muscles lending strength to the blows he dealt with Caulem’s walking staff. The men he fought appeared only as vague blurs and flashes of weaponry. Blood ran down Daryn’s face and neck until it disappeared in a larger stain of red spreading from his shoulder.

  The staff he held broke, and he threw it aside, taking a step forward to protect my father. Metal gleamed, and a sword sliced into his neck.

  A winter lily grew out of the unbroken ground, browning with the weight of time. A drop of Daryn’s blood fell on the faded, scarlet petals.

  The vision left me, and I sat where I was, stiff with shock. It was too late for me to do anything. From the position of the sun in my vision, I knew Daryn had died before I’d hidden in the cellar, running from his killers. The shock held me for a moment before the warm rush of rage followed it.

  My hand tightened on the butcher’s knife, and I ran for the ladder. I climbed up three rungs and pressed my back against the trapdoor, but it wouldn’t move. I stepped up another rung and straightened my knees, forcing my shoulder against the door and pushing, but the shelving atop it was too heavy for me to move. I hammered it with my fists, screaming with fury at the barrier that prevented me from attacking the raiders.

  At last, knuckles bloody, I stumbled off the ladder and sat on the ground—numb in body and soul. The raiders were gone. If they’d been in the house, they’d have heard me and opened the door.

  I dropped the knife in the dirt and stood up again. A rough table against the wall contained a few tools in need of sharpening. One of them was a saw.

  I fumbled in the darkness. My hands didn’t feel quite right after hitting the door. I found the saw and set to cutting my way out. It took a long time to cut the cross braces of the door with the dull blade angled over my head. Once the braces were gone, I pulled the door into sections that fell from the opening and dropped below me.

  With the door out of the way, I slid through the shelves and climbed out into daylight. Bits of broken crockery were everywhere, intermixed with chunks of wood and scraps of torn cloth from Ani’s quilt.

  In the barn a few chickens, still spooked by the noise of the raiders, scattered away from me. Daisy the cow lay dead in the straw. They’d hacked off one hind quarter and taken it with them, leaving the rest to rot. I looked away from the cloudy film that covered her warm, brown eyes.

  Louralou, our riding pony, was gone from her stall, along with every bit of leather harness in the tack room. The piglet was gone as well. They’d left the sacks of grain.

  Out of habit, I took out a fair measure of corn and scattered it for the chickens. There was a saddle blanket lying in
the walkway where someone had thrown it. I stared at it for a moment.

  I ought to cover their faces, I thought. The crows will come. The thought of Daryn’s eyes eaten by the birds made me violently ill, and I vomited in the straw.

  I rinsed my mouth in the bucket hanging in Louralou’s stall, then picked up the blanket. I beat it clean against one of the stall walls, and set off to cover my husband’s face.

  The wind was warm, carrying with it the sweet perfume of spring flowers. Only the torn-up soil of the trail showed that this afternoon was different from any other.

  I knew I wasn’t thinking clearly. I should have been worried about meeting the raiders again. But it was a distant thought, and I ignored it.

  Even so, when I heard men’s voices and the creak of a wagon, I stopped, then found a hiding place deep under the bows of an old spruce tree, ignoring the sharp prickles of the needles through my woolen gown. For a moment, I had a strange feeling there were two of me: one here and now, kneeling in my favorite dress, and the other…

  …wearing a stained tunic and a pair of men’s trousers with a crossbow clutched tightly in my hand.

  I wiped at my eyes with the rough saddle blanket and bit my lip until the pain drove the vision away.

  As the sound of the wagon’s squeaking drew closer, I recognized Talon the smith’s smooth tenor as he shouted something over the rattle of the wagon. It was the villagers, then.

  I eased out of the shelter of the spruce. It was much easier to go out than it had been to go in against the growth of needles. Dirt from the cellar stained my gown along with flour from the crock that usually sat on the shelves by the fireplace; the hem was covered with cow’s blood. Pieces of spruce hung from my hair, brushing against my cheek.

  When they came over the hill, I knew they’d been to the field before me. Knew it because the wagon was carrying something covered by a blanket.

  I stopped where I was, unwilling to go any closer. Albrin, who lived closest to my parents, was there on his favorite mare. The wagon was his, drawn by his oxen. Next to him rode Kith, his son, who’d served under Lord Moresh as one of his personal guards until he lost his left arm. Kith had been my brother’s best friend.

  Three of the four other men also lived nearby; only Talon actually lived in the village. He must have been at Albrin’s shoeing horses. Except for Kith, who still had his sword from his time of service, they were armed with scythes and long knives. There was a broken staff on top of the blanket that covered the contents of the wagon.

  They slowed when they saw me. I couldn’t tell what they thought because my gaze kept slipping past their faces and settling on the covered load in the wagon. My throat was dry and rasped uncomfortably as I spoke.

  “They’ve gone on. The raiders.”

  “Lass,” said Talon, though he was no older than I was. “Aren.” The sorrow on his broad face made him look like the hound that lived on Albrin’s front porch. “Your father….”

  I glanced at the wagon, noticed something dark dripping from the back of it, and hastily looked back at Talon.

  “Dead,” I said. “From the prints outside my home, one of them is riding my husband’s gelding. His shoes are new,” I said.

  I didn’t remember looking at the ground when I walked out of the house. But I remembered the prints. Quilliar and Kith had taught me to track when we were children. I glanced at Kith, but, as usual since his return last fall, it was impossible to tell what he was thinking.

  Talon looked a little disturbed at my change of subject. He spoke slowly. “Caulem must have been coming for help, but they’d posted someone on the main trail to your da’s. His horse ran into Albrin’s yard covered from ribs to croup in blood. Kith rang the alarm bell and we all headed out. We left some men at your ma’s, and the rest of us followed the horse’s trail.”

  I licked my lips nervously, wishing my thoughts weren’t so clear. Father had just bought that horse from Albrin, but the track it had followed should have taken it past my parents’ house before it ran to Albrin’s yard. My parents had an alarm bell in the yard, too. Ma should have been out ringing the bell before the horse made it as far as Albrin’s—if she’d been alive to ring it.

  The raiders hadn’t taken grain sacks from the barn because they already had enough grain, stolen from my parents.

  “Ma?” I said softly, as if my quietness would change the answer I knew they would give me.

  Talon looked around for help, but no one else took up the story. “They started at Widow Mavrenen’s,” he said as softly as I had, the way he spoke to fidgeting young horses. “Killed her and that old dog of hers. Took everything that wasn’t nailed down. They hit your folks’ place next. Mistress Ani was there and your ma. We figure they must have put up quite a fight from the looks of things.”

  He swallowed and looked uncomfortable. “Poul, he was with us, too. We left him and his da there to take care of things, but we were afraid, from the direction the raiders were taking, that they might decide to hit you up here before they left off.”

  I nodded dully. Ma, Ani, and her unborn child were dead, too.

  “There’s no one farther out than us,” I said, telling them nothing they didn’t already know. My voice was slurring, but I didn’t care enough to correct it. “The old place up on the hill has been vacant since old man Lovik died of lung fever last winter. They didn’t take much more from our place—just the pony, really. And Gram’s silver mirror.” I hadn’t looked for it, but it must be gone, too.

  “How is it that you escaped?” asked Kith suspiciously.

  His harsh tones pulled my attention to him. I’d grown up with Kith, fished with him when we were children, danced—and flirted—with him before he’d been called to war. When he’d come back to us, he’d come back with a loss that was more than his arm….

  “Time for you to go home, can’t fight with one arm. Too bad, really, you’d become quite a soldier…”

  I swallowed, forcing Lord Moresh’s voice away, knowing that they were all watching me. I’d never had visions like this before, as if all I had to do was think of something and the sight grabbed it for me.

  “It was stupid,” I said, finally. I knew another time I’d have been angry and hurt at his suspicion. “I was starting down the stairs to the cellar to get some salt pork for…for Daryn’s lunch when I heard them outside. So I hid down in the cellar with a rug over the trapdoor. I waited until it was quiet before I came out.”

  I walked past them then, to the wagon. I think Albrin asked me something, but I couldn’t focus on it. I lifted up the quilt—it wasn’t one of Ma’s, she never used flowers in her patterns.

  I stared at the bodies lying in the wagon. Death had marked them so they didn’t look like the people I had loved. Someone had closed their eyes, but I tucked the horse blanket over Daryn’s head anyway, climbing on the wheel to get close enough to do it. Then I covered them back over with the flowered quilt.

  “I think I have some information that the village elders need to hear,” I said, stepping down from the wagon.

  “About the raiders?” asked Kith. “From what you said, you didn’t even see them.”

  “Mmm?” I looked up at him. If I’d told Daryn about my vision, he might still be alive. I’d promised to tell him about my sight if something bad happened. An atonement I couldn’t make now except by proxy, with the village elders standing in Daryn’s stead.

  I even had a good reason to do it, to take my punishment. Magic was loose in the mountains again. I could feel the pulse of it under my feet. I didn’t know exactly how it happened, or why. But Gram’s stories had always ended….

  The old woman smiled at the children who were bundled in quilts on either side of her.

  “But someday,” she said, “someday, the magic will return. And with it will come the white beast, the sprites, and the giants. The gremlins, the trolls, and all that is fey.”

  “But Gram,” piped the boy, “won’t they be angry?”

  If Q
uilliar had been right, Fallbrook needed to be warned.

  I spoke quickly, hoping no one had noticed my lapse. “The quickest way to the village is back to our—to my home and down by way of the path next to Soul’s Creek to the river.”

  “What do you want to talk to the elders about?” pursued Kith doggedly.

  “I have the sight,” I said.

  There, it was said, never to be taken back. I could not have more effectively set myself apart from the villagers if I had slit my own throat. I couldn’t bring myself to care. I would tell the elders, and pay the price they demanded.

  The numbness that had protected me since I climbed out of the cellar was fading, being replaced by pain so great it made me want to scream. No one left of my family. No warm husband to huddle beside when I awoke to a crisp, spring morning—never again.

  I had done my screaming in the cellar. I turned back down the trail toward—well, it didn’t seem like home anymore. It had been that for—I glanced unobtrusively at the sun—only a little more than a day. The numbness settled back down again, like a soft quilt protecting me from the cold.

  “What did she say?” asked one of the men I didn’t know very well. I thought his name was Ruprick.

  “She’s in shock,” said Albrin shortly. “She doesn’t know what she’s saying.”

  Kith’s yellow gelding passed me and moved to block my path. Kith sheathed his sword and held out his hand. There was nothing in his face, but when I took his hand, he swung me up behind him, much as he had done in those long-ago days when I’d been his best friend’s little pest of a sister.

  His horse, Torch, danced a little, throwing me forward and giving me an excuse to press my forehead against Kith’s back. If I cried, I could trust him not to tell. Though he’d become wary, behaving as if we all were strangers to him, he wasn’t a stranger to me. I knew he could be counted on to keep secrets.